---

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
JOAN OF ARC

---

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CHAPTER XXVIII.

The troops must have a rest. Two days would
be allowed for this.

The morning of the 14th I was writing from
Joan's dictation in a small room which she some-
times used as a private office when she wanted to
get away from officials and their interruptions.
Catherine Boucher came in and sat down and said:

"Joan, dear, I want you to talk to me."

"Indeed, I am not sorry for that, but glad. What
is in your mind?"

"This. I scarcely slept last night, for thinking
of the dangers you are running. The Paladin told
me how you made the duke stand out of the way
when the cannon-balls were flying all about, and so
saved his life."

"Well, that was right, wasn't it?"

"Right? Yes; but you stayed there yourself.
Why will you do like that? It seems such a wanton
risk."

"Oh, no, it was not so. I was not in any
danger."

"How can you say that, Joan, with those deadly
things flying all about you?"

---

Joan laughed, and tried to turn the subject, but
Catherine persisted. She said:

"It was horribly dangerous, and it could not be
necessary to stay in such a place. And you led an
assault again. Joan, it is tempting Providence. I
want you to make me a promise. I want you to
promise me that you will let others lead the assaults,
if there must be assaults, and that you will take
better care of yourself in those dreadful battles.
Will you?"

But Joan fought away from the promise and did
not give it. Catherine sat troubled and discontented
awhile, then she said:

"Joan, are you going to be a soldier always?
These wars are so long—so long. They last for-
ever and ever and ever."

There was a glad flash in Joan's eye as she cried:

"This campaign will do all the really hard work
that is in front of it in the next four days. The rest
of it will be gentler—oh, far less bloody. Yes, in
four days France will gather another trophy like the
redemption of Orleans and make her second long
step toward freedom!"

Catherine started (and so did I); then she gazed
long at Joan like one in a trance, murmuring "four
days—four days," as if to herself and uncon-
sciously. Finally she asked, in a low voice that
had something of awe in it:

"Joan, tell me—how is it that you know that?
For you do know it, I think."

---

"Yes," said Joan, dreamily, "I know—I know.
I shall strike—and strike again. And before the
fourth day is finished I shall strike yet again." She
became silent. We sat wondering and still. This
was for a whole minute, she looking at the floor and
her lips moving but uttering nothing. Then came
these words, but hardly audible: "And in a thou-
sand years the English power in France will not rise
up from that blow."

It made my flesh creep. It was uncanny. She
was in a trance again—I could see it—just as she
was that day in the pastures of Domremy when she
prophesied about us boys in the war and afterward
did not know that she had done it. She was not
conscious now; but Catherine did not know that,
and so she said, in a happy voice:

"Oh, I believe it, I believe it, and I am so glad!
Then you will come back and bide with us all your
life long, and we will love you so, and so honor
you!"

A scarcely perceptible spasm flitted across Joan's
face, and the dreamy voice muttered:

"Before two years are sped I shall die a cruel
death!"

I sprang forward with a warning hand up. That
is why Catherine did not scream. She was going
to do that—I saw it plainly. Then I whispered her
to slip out of the place, and say nothing of what
had happened. I said Joan was asleep—asleep and
dreaming. Catherine whispered back, and said:

---

"Oh, I am so grateful that it is only a
dream! It sounded like prophecy." And she was
gone.

Like prophecy! I knew it was prophecy; and I
sat down crying, as knowing we should lose her.
Soon she started, shivering slightly, and came to
herself, and looked around and saw me crying there,
and jumped out of her chair and ran to me all in a
whirl of sympathy and compassion, and put her
hand on my head, and said:

"My poor boy! What is it? Look up and tell
me."

I had to tell her a lie; I grieved to do it, but
there was no other way. I picked up an old letter
from my table, written by Heaven knows who, about
some matter Heaven knows what, and told her I had
just gotten it from Père Fronte, and that in it it said
the children's Fairy Tree had been chopped down
by some miscreant or other, and—

I got no further. She snatched the letter from
my hand and searched it up and down and all over,
turning it this way and that, and sobbing great sobs,
and the tears flowing down her cheeks, and ejaculat-
ing all the time, "Oh, cruel, cruel! how could any be
so heartless? Ah, poor Arbre Fée de Bourlemont
gone—and we children loved it so! Show me the
place where it says it!"

And I, still lying, showed her the pretended fatal
words on the pretended fatal page, and she gazed at
them through her tears, and said she could see her-

---

self that they were hateful, ugly words—they "had
the very look of it."

Then we heard a strong voice down the corridor
announcing:

"His Majesty's messenger—with dispatches for
her Excellency the Commander-in-Chief of the
armies of France!"

---

CHAPTER XXIX.

I knew she had seen the vision of the Tree. But
when? I could not know. Doubtless before
she had lately told the King to use her, for that she
had but one year left to work in. It had not oc-
curred to me at the time, but the conviction came
upon me now that at that time she had already seen
the Tree. It had brought her a welcome message;
that was plain, otherwise she could not have been so
joyous and light-hearted as she had been these latter
days. The death-warning had nothing dismal about
it for her; no, it was remission of exile, it was leave
to come home.

Yes, she had seen the Tree. No one had taken
the prophecy to heart which she made to the King;
and for a good reason, no doubt; no one wanted to
take it to heart; all wanted to banish it away and
forget it. And all had succeeded, and would go on
to the end placid and comfortable. All but me
alone. I must carry my awful secret without any to
help me. A heavy load, a bitter burden; and would
cost me a daily heart-break. She was to die; and
so soon. I had never dreamed of that. How could
I, and she so strong and fresh and young, and every

---

day earning a new right to a peaceful and honored
old age? For at that time I thought old age valu-
able. I do not know why, but I thought so. All
young people think it, I believe, they being ignorant
and full of superstitions. She had seen the Tree.
All that miserable night those ancient verses went
floating back and forth through my brain:
"And when in exile wand'ring, weShall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,Oh, rise upon our sight!"

But at dawn the bugles and the drums burst
through the dreamy hush of the morning, and it was
turn out all! mount and ride. For there was red
work to be done.

We marched to Meung without halting. There
we carried the bridge by assault, and left a force to
hold it, the rest of the army marching away next
morning toward Beaugency, where the lion Talbot,
the terror of the French, was in command. When
we arrived at that place, the English retired into the
castle and we sat down in the abandoned town.

Talbot was not at the moment present in person,
for he had gone away to watch for and welcome
Fastolfe and his re-enforcement of five thousand
men.

Joan placed her batteries and bombarded the
castle till night. Then some news came: Riche-
mont, Constable of France, this long time in dis-
grace with the King, largely because of the evil
machinations of La Tremouille and his party, was

---

approaching with a large body of men to offer his
services to Joan—and very much she needed them,
now that Fastolfe was so close by. Richemont had
wanted to join us before, when we first marched on
Orleans; but the foolish King, slave of those paltry
advisers of his, warned him to keep his distance and
refused all reconciliation with him.

I go into these details because they are important.
Important because they lead up to the exhibition of
a new gift in Joan's extraordinary mental make-up
—statesmanship. It is a sufficiently strange thing
to find that great quality in an ignorant country girl
of seventeen and a half, but she had it.

Joan was for receiving Richemont cordially, and
so was La Hire and the two young Lavals and
other chiefs, but the Lieutenant-General, D'Alençon,
strenuously and stubbornly opposed it. He said he
had absolute orders from the King to deny and defy
Richemont, and that if they were overridden he
would leave the army. This would have been a
heavy disaster, indeed. But Joan set herself the
task of persuading him that the salvation of France
took precedence of all minor things—even the com-
mands of a sceptred ass; and she accomplished it.
She persuaded him to disobey the King in the
interest of the nation, and to be reconciled to Count
Richemont and welcome him. That was statesman-
ship; and of the highest and soundest sort. What-
ever thing men call great, look for it in Joan of Arc,
and there you will find it.

---

JOAN AND THE WOUNDED ENGLISH SOLDIER

---

---

In the early morning, June 17th, the scouts re-
ported the approach of Talbot and Fastolfe with
Fastolfe's succoring force. Then the drums beat to
arms; and we set forth to meet the English, leaving
Richemont and his troops behind to watch the castle
of Beaugency and keep its garrison at home. By
and by we came in sight of the enemy. Fastolfe
had tried to convince Talbot that it would be wisest
to retreat and not risk a battle with Joan at this
time, but distribute the new levies among the Eng-
lish strongholds of the Loire, thus securing them
against capture; then be patient and wait—wait for
more levies from Paris; let Joan exhaust her army
with fruitless daily skirmishing; then at the right
time fall upon her in resistless mass and annihilate
her. He was a wise old experienced general, was
Fastolfe. But that fierce Talbot would hear of no
delay. He was in a rage over the punishment which
the Maid had inflicted upon him at Orleans and
since, and he swore by God and Saint George that
he would have it out with her if he had to fight her
all alone. So Fastolfe yielded, though he said they
were now risking the loss of everything which the
English had gained by so many years' work and so
many hard knocks.

The enemy had taken up a strong position, and
were waiting, in order of battle, with their archers to
the front and a stockade before them.

Night was coming on. A messenger came from
the English with a rude defiance and an offer of

---

battle. But Joan's dignity was not ruffled, her bear-
ing was not discomposed. She said to the herald:

"Go back and say it is too late to meet to-night;
but to-morrow, please God and our Lady, we will
come to close quarters."

The night fell dark and rainy. It was that sort of
light steady rain which falls so softly and brings to
one's spirit such serenity and peace. About ten
o'clock D'Alençon, the Bastard of Orleans, La Hire,
Pothon of Saintrailles, and two or three other gen-
erals came to our headquarters tent, and sat down
to discuss matters with Joan. Some thought it was
a pity that Joan had declined battle, some thought
not. Then Pothon asked her why she had declined
it. She said:

"There was more than one reason. These Eng-
lish are ours—they cannot get away from us.
Wherefore there is no need to take risks, as at other
times. The day was far spent. It is good to have
much time and the fair light of day when one's
force is in a weakened state—nine hundred of us
yonder keeping the bridge of Meung under the
Marshal de Rais, fifteen hundred with the Constable
of France keeping the bridge and watching the castle
of Beaugency."

Dunois said:

"I grieve for this depletion, Excellency, but it
cannot be helped. And the case will be the same
the morrow, as to that."

Joan was walking up and down just then. She

---

laughed her affectionate, comrady laugh, and stop-
ping before that old war-tiger she put her small
hand above his head and touched one of his plumes,
saying:

"Now tell me, wise man, which feather is it that
I touch?"

"In sooth, Excellency, that I cannot."

"Name of God, Bastard, Bastard! you cannot
tell me this small thing, yet are bold to name a
large one—telling us what is in the stomach of the
unborn morrow: that we shall not have those men.
Now it is my thought that they will be with us."

That made a stir. All wanted to know why she
thought that. But La Hire took the word and said:

"Let be. If she thinks it, that is enough. It
will happen."

Then Pothon of Saintrailles said:

"There were other reasons for declining battle,
according to the saying of your Excellency?"

"Yes. One was that we being weak and the day
far gone, the battle might not be decisive. When
it is fought it must be decisive. And shall be."

"God grant it, and amen. There were still other
reasons?"

"One other—yes." She hesitated a moment,
then said: "This was not the day. To-morrow is
the day. It is so written."

They were going to assail her with eager question-
ings, but she put up her hand and prevented them.
Then she said:

---

"It will be the most noble and beneficent victory
that God has vouchsafed to France at any time. I
pray you question me not as to whence or how I
know this thing, but be content that it is so."

There was pleasure in every face, and conviction
and high confidence. A murmur of conversation
broke out, but was interrupted by a messenger from
the outposts who brought news—namely, that for
an hour there had been stir and movement in the
English camp of a sort unusual at such a time and
with a resting army, he said. Spies had been sent
under cover of the rain and darkness to inquire into
it. They had just come back and reported that
large bodies of men had been dimly made out who
were slipping stealthily away in the direction of
Meung.

The generals were very much surprised, as any
might tell from their faces.

"It is a retreat," said Joan.

"It has that look," said D'Alençon.

"It certainly has," observed the Bastard and La
Hire.

"It was not to be expected," said Louis de Bour-
bon, "but one can divine the purpose of it."

"Yes," responded Joan. "Talbot has reflected.
His rash brain has cooled. He thinks to take the
bridge of Meung and escape to the other side of the
river. He knows that this leaves his garrison of
Beaugency at the mercy of fortune, to escape our
hands if it can; but there is no other course if he

---

would avoid this battle, and that he also knows.
But he shall not get the bridge. We will see to
that."

"Yes," said D'Alençon, "we must follow him,
and take care of that matter. What of Beau-
gency?"

"Leave Beaugency to me, gentle duke; I will
have it in two hours, and at no cost of blood."

"It is true, Excellency. You will but need to
deliver this news there and receive the surrender."

"Yes. And I will be with you at Meung with
the dawn, fetching the Constable and his fifteen
hundred; and when Talbot knows that Beaugency
has fallen it will have an effect upon him."

"By the mass, yes!" cried La Hire. "He will
join his Meung garrison to his army and break for
Paris. Then we shall have our bridge force with us
again, along with our Beaugency-watchers, and be
stronger for our great day's work by four-and-
twenty hundred able soldiers, as was here promised
within the hour. Verily this Englishman is doing
our errands for us and saving us much blood
and trouble. Orders, Excellency—give us our
orders!"

"They are simple. Let the men rest three hours
longer. At one o'clock the advance-guard will
march, under your command, with Pothon of Sain-
trailles as second; the second division will follow at
two under the Lieutenant-General. Keep well in the
rear of the enemy, and see to it that you avoid an

---

engagement. I will ride under guard to Beaugency
and make so quick work there that I and the Con-
stable of France will join you before dawn with his
men."

She kept her word. Her guard mounted and we
rode off through the puttering rain, taking with us a
captured English officer to confirm Joan's news.
We soon covered the journey and summoned the
castle. Richard Guétin, Talbot's lieutenant, being
convinced that he and his five hundred men were
left helpless, conceded that it would be useless
to try to hold out. He could not expect easy
terms, yet Joan granted them nevertheless. His
garrison could keep their horses and arms, and
carry away property to the value of a silver mark
per man. They could go whither they pleased, but
must not take arms against France again under ten
days.

Before dawn we were with our army again, and
with us the Constable and nearly all his men, for we
left only a small garrison in Beaugency castle. We
heard the dull booming of cannon to the front, and
knew that Talbot was beginning his attack on the
bridge. But some time before it was yet light the
sound ceased and we heard it no more.

Guétin had sent a messenger through our lines
under a safe-conduct given by Joan, to tell Talbot
of the surrender. Of course this poursuivant had
arrived ahead of us. Talbot had held it wisdom to
turn now and retreat upon Paris. When daylight

---

came he had disappeared; and with him Lord Scales
and the garrison of Meung.

What a harvest of English strongholds we had
reaped in those three days!—strongholds which
had defied France with quite cool confidence and
plenty of it until we came.

---

CHAPTER XXX.

When the morning broke at last on that forever
memorable 18th of June, there was no enemy
discoverable anywhere, as I have said. But that
did not trouble me. I knew we should find him,
and that we should strike him; strike him the
promised blow—the one from which the English
power in France would not rise up in a thousand
years, as Joan had said in her trance.

The enemy had plunged into the wide plains of
La Beauce—a roadless waste covered with bushes,
with here and there bodies of forest trees—a region
where an army would be hidden from view in a very
little while. We found the trail in the soft wet earth
and followed it. It indicated an orderly march;
no confusion, no panic.

But we had to be cautious. In such a piece of
country we could walk into an ambush without any
trouble. Therefore Joan sent bodies of cavalry
ahead under La Hire, Pothon, and other captains,
to feel the way. Some of the other officers began
to show uneasiness; this sort of hide-and-go-seek

---

business troubled them and made their confidence a
little shaky. Joan divined their state of mind and
cried out impetuously:

"Name of God, what would you? We must
smite these English, and we will. They shall not
escape us. Though they were hung to the clouds
we would get them!"

By and by we were nearing Patay; it was about a
league away. Now at this time our reconnoissance,
feeling its way in the bush, frightened a deer, and it
went bounding away and was out of sight in a mo-
ment. Then hardly a minute later a dull great
shout went up in the distance toward Patay. It was
the English soldiery. They had been shut up in
garrison so long on mouldy food that they could not
keep their delight to themselves when this fine fresh
meat came springing into their midst. Poor creature,
it had wrought damage to a nation which loved it
well. For the French knew where the English were
now, whereas the English had no suspicion of where
the French were.

La Hire halted where he was, and sent back the
tidings. Joan was radiant with joy. The Duke
d'Alençon said to her:

"Very well, we have found them; shall we fight
them?"

"Have you good spurs, prince?"

"Why? Will they make us run away?"

"Nenni, en nom de Dieu! These English are
ours—they are lost. They will fly. Who over-

---

takes them will need good spurs. Forward—close
up!"

By the time we had come up with La Hire the
English had discovered our presence. Talbot's
force was marching in three bodies. First his
advance-guard; then his artillery; then his battle
corps a good way in the rear. He was now out of
the bush and in a fair open country. He at once
posted his artillery, his advance-guard, and five
hundred picked archers along some hedges where
the French would be obliged to pass, and hoped to
hold this position till his battle corps could come
up. Sir John Fastolfe urged the battle corps into a
gallop. Joan saw her opportunity and ordered La
Hire to advance—which La Hire promptly did,
launching his wild riders like a storm-wind, his cus-
tomary fashion.

The Duke and the Bastard wanted to follow, but
Joan said:

"Not yet—wait."

So they waited—impatiently, and fidgeting in
their saddles. But she was steady—gazing straight
before her, measuring, weighing, calculating—by
shades, minutes, fractions of minutes, seconds—
with all her great soul present, in eye, and set of
head, and noble pose of body—but patient, steady,
master of herself—master of herself and of the
situation.

And yonder, receding, receding, plumes lifting
and falling, lifting and falling, streamed the thunder-

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ing charge of La Hire's godless crew, La Hire's
great figure dominating it and his sword stretched
aloft like a flagstaff.

"Oh, Satan and his Hellions, see them go!"
Somebody muttered it in deep admiration.

And now he was closing up—closing up on
Fastolfe's rushing corps.

And now he struck it—struck it hard, and broke
its order. It lifted the duke and the Bastard in
their saddles to see it; and they turned, trembling
with excitement, to Joan, saying:

"Now!"

But she put up her hand, still gazing, weighing,
calculating, and said again:

"Wait—not yet."

Fastolfe's hard-driven battle corps raged on like
an avalanche toward the waiting advance-guard.
Suddenly these conceived the idea that it was flying
in panic before Joan; and so in that instant it broke
and swarmed away in a mad panic itself, with Talbot
storming and cursing after it.

Now was the golden time. Joan drove her spurs
home and waved the advance with her sword.
"Follow me!" she cried, and bent her head to her
horse's neck and sped away like the wind!

We swept down into the confusion of that flying
rout, and for three long hours we cut and hacked
and stabbed. At last the bugles sang "Halt!"

The Battle of Patay was won.

Joan of Arc dismounted, and stood surveying

---

that awful field, lost in thought. Presently she
said:

"The praise is to God. He has smitten with a
heavy hand this day." After a little she lifted her
face, and looking afar off, said, with the manner of
one who is thinking aloud, "In a thousand years—
a thousand years—the English power in France will
not rise up from this blow." She stood again a
time thinking, then she turned toward her grouped
generals, and there was a glory in her face and a
noble light in her eye; and she said:

"Oh, friends, friends, do you know?—do you
comprehend? France is on the way to be free!"

"And had never been, but for Joan of Arc!"
said La Hire, passing before her and bowing low,
the others following and doing likewise; he mutter-
ing as he went, "I will say it though I be damned
for it." Then battalion after battalion of our vic-
torious army swung by, wildly cheering. And they
shouted "Live forever, Maid of Orleans, live for-
ever!" while Joan, smiling, stood at the salute with
her sword.

This was not the last time I saw the Maid of
Orleans on the red field of Patay. Toward the end
of the day I came upon her where the dead and
dying lay stretched all about in heaps and winrows;
our men had mortally wounded an English prisoner
who was too poor to pay a ransom, and from a dis-
tance she had seen that cruel thing done; and had
galloped to the place and sent for a priest, and now

---

she was holding the head of her dying enemy in her
lap, and easing him to his death with comforting
soft words, just as his sister might have done; and
the womanly tears running down her face all the
time.*

Lord Ronald Gower (Joan of Arc, p. 82) says: "Michelet dis-
covered this story in the deposition of Joan of Arc's page, Louis de
Conte, who was probably an eyewitness of the scene." This is true.
It was a part of the testimony of the author of these "Personal Recol-
lections of Joan of Arc," given by him in the Rehabilitation proceed-
ings of 1456.—Translator.

---

CHAPTER XXXI.

Joan had said true: France was on the way to
be free.

The war called the Hundred Years' War was very
sick to-day. Sick on its English side—for the very
first time since its birth, ninety-one years gone by.

Shall we judge battles by the numbers killed and
the ruin wrought? Or shall we not rather judge
them by the results which flowed from them? Any
one will say that a battle is only truly great or small
according to its results. Yes, any one will grant
that, for it is the truth.

Judged by results, Patay's place is with the few
supremely great and imposing battles that have been
fought since the peoples of the world first resorted to
arms for the settlement of their quarrels. So
judged, it is even possible that Patay has no peer
among that few just mentioned, but stands alone, as
the supremest of historic conflicts. For when it
began France lay gasping out the remnant of an
exhausted life, her case wholly hopeless in the view of
all political physicians; when it ended, three hours
later, she was convalescent. Convalescent, and noth-

---

ing requisite but time and ordinary nursing to bring
her back to perfect health. The dullest physician
of them all could see this, and there was none to
deny it.

Many death-sick nations have reached convales-
cence through a series of battles, a procession of
battles, a weary tale of wasting conflicts stretching
over years, but only one has reached it in a single
day and by a single battle. That nation is France,
and that battle Patay.

Remember it and be proud of it; for you are
French, and it is the stateliest fact in the long annals
of your country. There it stands, with its head in
the clouds! And when you grow up you will go on
pilgrimage to the field of Patay, and stand uncov-
ered in the presence of—what? A monument with
its head in the clouds? Yes. For all nations in all
times have built monuments on their battlefields to
keep green the memory of the perishable deed that
was wrought there and of the perishable name of
him who wrought it; and will France neglect Patay
and Joan of Arc? Not for long. And will she
build a monument scaled to their rank as compared
with the world's other fields and heroes? Perhaps
—if there be room for it under the arch of the sky.

But let us look back a little, and consider certain
strange and impressive facts. The Hundred Years'
War began in 1337. It raged on and on, year after
year and year after year; and at last England
stretched France prone with that fearful blow at

---

Crécy. But she rose and struggled on, year after
year, and at last again she went down under another
devastating blow—Poitiers. She gathered her crip-
pled strength once more, and the war raged on,
and on, and still on, year after year, decade after
decade. Children were born, grew up, married,
died—the war raged on; their children in turn grew
up, married, died—the war raged on; their chil-
dren, growing, saw France struck down again; this
time under the incredible disaster of Agincourt—
and still the war raged on, year after year, and in
time these children married in their turn.

France was a wreck, a ruin, a desolation. The
half of it belonged to England, with none to dispute
or deny the truth; the other half belonged to
nobody—in three months would be flying the
English flag; the French King was making ready
to throw away his crown and flee beyond the seas.

Now came the ignorant country maid out of her
remote village and confronted this hoary war, this
all-consuming conflagration that had swept the land
for three generations. Then began the briefest and
most amazing campaign that is recorded in history.
In seven weeks it was finished. In seven weeks she
hopelessly crippled that gigantic war that was ninety-
one years old. At Orleans she struck it a stagger-
ing blow; on the field of Patay she broke its back.

Think of it. Yes, one can do that; but under-
stand it? Ah, that is another matter; none will
ever be able to comprehend that stupefying marvel.

---

Seven weeks—with here and there a little blood-
shed. Perhaps the most of it, in any single fight,
at Patay, where the English began six thousand
strong and left two thousand dead upon the field.
It is said and believed that in three battles alone—
Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt—near a hundred
thousand Frenchmen fell, without counting the
thousand other fights of that long war. The dead
of that war make a mournful long list—an inter-
minable list. Of men slain in the field the count
goes by tens of thousands; of innocent women and
children slain by bitter hardship and hunger it goes
by that appalling term, millions.

It was an ogre, that war; an ogre that went about
for near a hundred years, crunching men and drip-
ping blood from his jaws. And with her little hand
that child of seventeen struck him down; and yon-
der he lies stretched on the field of Patay, and will
not get up any more while this old world lasts.

---

CHAPTER XXXII.

The great news of Patay was carried over the
whole of France in twenty hours, people said.
I do not know as to that; but one thing is sure,
anyway: the moment a man got it he flew shouting
and glorifying God and told his neighbor; and that
neighbor flew with it to the next homestead; and so
on and so on without resting the word traveled; and
when a man got it in the night, at what hour soever,
he jumped out of his bed and bore the blessed mes-
sage along. And the joy that went with it was like
the light that flows across the land when an eclipse
is receding from the face of the sun; and, indeed,
you may say that France had lain in an eclipse this
long time; yes, buried in a black gloom which these
beneficent tidings were sweeping away now before
the onrush of their white splendor.

The news beat the flying enemy to Yeuville, and
the town rose against its English masters and shut
the gates against their brethren. It flew to Mont
Pipeau, to Saint Simon, and to this, that, and the
other English fortress; and straightway the garrison
applied the torch and took to the fields and the

---

woods. A detachment of our army occupied Meung
and pillaged it.

When we reached Orleans that town was as much
as fifty times insaner with joy than we had ever seen
it before—which is saying much. Night had just
fallen, and the illuminations were on so wonderful a
scale that we seemed to plow through seas of fire;
and as to the noise—the hoarse cheering of the
multitude, the thundering of cannon, the clash of
bells—indeed, there was never anything like it.
And everywhere rose a new cry that burst upon us
like a storm when the column entered the gates, and
nevermore ceased: "Welcome to Joan of Arc—
way for the Saviour of France!" And there
was another cry: "Crécy is avenged! Poitiers is
avenged! Agincourt is avenged!—Patay shall live
forever!"

Mad? Why, you never could imagine it in the
world. The prisoners were in the center of the
column. When that came along and the people
caught sight of their masterful old enemy Talbot,
that had made them dance so long to his grim war-
music, you may imagine what the uproar was like if
you can, for I cannot describe it. They were so
glad to see him that presently they wanted to have
him out and hang him; so Joan had him brought
up to the front to ride in her protection. They
made a striking pair.

---

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Yes, Orleans was in a delirium of felicity. She
invited the King, and made sumptuous prepa-
rations to receive him, but—he didn't come. He
was simply a serf at that time, and La Tremouille
was his master. Master and serf were visiting
together at the master's castle of Sully-sur-Loire.

At Beaugency Joan had engaged to bring about a
reconciliation between the Constable Richemont and
the King. She took Richemont to Sully-sur-Loire
and made her promise good.

The great deeds of Joan of Arc are five:

1. The Raising of the Siege.2. The Victory of Patay.3. The Reconciliation at Sully-sur-Loire.4. The Coronation of the King.5. The Bloodless March.

We shall come to the Bloodless March presently
(and the Coronation). It was the victorious long
march which Joan made through the enemy's coun-
try from Gien to Rheims, and thence to the gates of
Paris, capturing every English town and fortress
that barred the road, from the beginning of the

---

journey to the end of it; and this by the mere force
of her name, and without shedding a drop of blood
—perhaps the most extraordinary campaign in this
regard in history—this is the most glorious of her
military exploits.

The Reconciliation was one of Joan's most im-
portant achievements. No one else could have ac-
complished it; and, in fact, no one else of high
consequence had any disposition to try. In brains,
in scientific warfare, and in statesmanship the Con-
stable Richemont was the ablest man in France.
His loyalty was sincere; his probity was above sus-
picion—(and it made him sufficiently conspicuous
in that trivial and conscienceless Court).

In restoring Richemont to France, Joan made
thoroughly secure the successful completion of the
great work which she had begun. She had never
seen Richemont until he came to her with his little
army. Was it not wonderful that at a glance she
should know him for the one man who could finish
and perfect her work and establish it in perpetuity?
How was it that that child was able to do this? It
was because she had the "seeing eye," as one of
our knights had once said. Yes, she had that great
gift—almost the highest and rarest that has been
granted to man. Nothing of an extraordinary sort
was still to be done, yet the remaining work could
not safely be left to the King's idiots; for it would
require wise statesmanship and long and patient
though desultory hammering of the enemy. Now

---

and then, for a quarter of a century yet, there would
be a little fighting to do, and a handy man could
carry that on with small disturbance to the rest of
the country; and little by little, and with progres-
sive certainty, the English would disappear from
France.

And that happened. Under the influence of
Richemont the King became at a later time a
man—a man, a king, a brave and capable and
determined soldier. Within six years after Patay
he was leading storming parties himself; fighting in
fortress ditches up to his waist in water, and climb-
ing scaling-ladders under a furious fire with a pluck
that would have satisfied even Joan of Arc. In time
he and Richemont cleared away all the English;
even from regions where the people had been under
their mastership for three hundred years. In such
regions wise and careful work was necessary, for the
English rule had been fair and kindly; and men who
have been ruled in that way are not always anxious
for a change.

Which of Joan's five chief deeds shall we call
chiefest? It is my thought that each in its turn was
that. This is saying that, taken as a whole, they
equalized each other, and neither was then greater
than its mate.

Do you perceive? Each was a stage in an ascent.
To leave out one of them would defeat the journey;
to achieve one of them at the wrong time and in the
wrong place would have the same effect.

---

Consider the Coronation. As a masterpiece of
diplomacy, where can you find its superior in our
history? Did the King suspect its vast importance?
No. Did his ministers? No. Did the astute Bed-
ford, representative of the English crown? No.
An advantage of incalculable importance was here
under the eyes of the King and of Bedford; the
King could get it by a bold stroke, Bedford could
get it without an effort; but, being ignorant of its
value, neither of them put forth his hand. Of all
the wise people in high office in France, only one
knew the priceless worth of this neglected prize—
the untaught child of seventeen, Joan of Arc—and
she had known it from the beginning, had spoken of
it from the beginning as an essential detail of her
mission.

How did she know it? It is simple: she was a
peasant. That tells the whole story. She was of
the people and knew the people; those others
moved in a loftier sphere and knew nothing much
about them. We make little account of that
vague, formless, inert mass, that mighty underly-
ing force which we call "the people"—an epithet
which carries contempt with it. It is a strange
attitude; for at bottom we know that the throne
which the people support stands, and that when
that support is removed nothing in this world can
save it.

Now, then, consider this fact, and observe its im-
portance. Whatever the parish priest believes his

---

flock believes; they love him, they revere him; he
is their unfailing friend, their dauntless protector,
their comforter in sorrow, their helper in their day
of need; he has their whole confidence; what he
tells them to do, that they will do, with a blind and
affectionate obedience, let it cost what it may. Add
these facts thoughtfully together, and what is the
sum? This: The parish priest governs the nation.
What is the King, then, if the parish priest with-
draw his support and deny his authority? Merely
a shadow and no King; let him resign.

Do you get that idea? Then let us proceed. A
priest is consecrated to his office by the awful hand
of God, laid upon him by his appointed represent-
ative on earth. That consecration is final; nothing
can undo it, nothing can remove it. Neither the
Pope nor any other power can strip the priest of his
office; God gave it, and it is forever sacred and
secure. The dull parish knows all this. To priest
and parish, whosoever is anointed of God bears an
office whose authority can no longer be disputed or
assailed. To the parish priest, and to his subjects
the nation, an uncrowned king is a similitude of a
person who has been named for holy orders but has
not been consecrated; he has no office, he has not
been ordained, another may be appointed in his
place. In a word, an uncrowned king is a doubtful
king; but if God appoint him and His servant the
Bishop anoint him, the doubt is annihilated; the
priest and the parish are his loyal subjects straight-

---

way, and while he lives they will recognize no king
but him.

To Joan of Arc the peasant girl, Charles VII. was
no King until he was crowned; to her he was only
the Dauphin; that is to say, the heir. If I have
ever made her call him King, it was a mistake; she
called him the Dauphin, and nothing else until after
the Coronation. It shows you as in a mirror—for
Joan was a mirror in which the lowly hosts of France
were clearly reflected—that to all that vast under-
lying force called "the people" he was no King
but only Dauphin before his crowning, and was
indisputably and irrevocably King after it.

Now you understand what a colossal move on the
political chessboard the Coronation was. Bedford
realized this by and by, and tried to patch up his
mistake by crowning his King; but what good could
that do? None in the world.

Speaking of chess, Joan's great acts may be
likened to that game. Each move was made in its
proper order, and it was great and effective because
it was made in its proper order and not out of it.
Each, at the time made, seemed the greatest move;
but the final result made them all recognizable as
equally essential and equally important. This is the
game, as played:

1. Joan moves Orleans and Patay—check.2. Then moves the Reconciliation—but does not
proclaim check, it being a move for position, and
to take effect later.

---

3. Next she moves the Coronation—check.4. Next, the Bloodless March—check.5. Final move (after her death) the reconciled
Constable Richemont to the French King's elbow—
checkmate.

---

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The Campaign of the Loire had as good as
opened the road to Rheims. There was no
sufficient reason now why the Coronation should not
take place. The Coronation would complete the
mission which Joan had received from heaven, and
then she would be forever done with war, and would
fly home to her mother and her sheep, and never
stir from the hearthstone and happiness any more.
That was her dream; and she could not rest, she
was so impatient to see it fulfilled. She became so
possessed with this matter that I began to lose faith
in her two prophecies of her early death—and, of
course, when I found that faith wavering I encour-
aged it to waver all the more.

The King was afraid to start to Rheims, because
the road was mile-posted with English fortresses, so
to speak. Joan held them in light esteem and not
things to be afraid of in the existing modified condi-
tion of English confidence.

And she was right. As it turned out, the march
to Rheims was nothing but a holiday excursion,
Joan did not even take any artillery along, she was
so sure it would not be necessary. We marched

---

from Gien twelve thousand strong. This was the
29th of June. The Maid rode by the side of the
King; on his other side was the Duke d'Alençon.
After the duke followed three other princes of the
blood. After these followed the Bastard of Orleans,
the Marshal de Boussac, and the Admiral of France.
After these came La Hire, Saintrailles, Tremouille,
and a long procession of knights and nobles.

We rested three days before Auxerre. The city
provisioned the army, and a deputation waited upon
the King, but we did not enter the place.

Saint-Florentin opened its gates to the King.

On the 4th of July we reached Saint-Fal, and
yonder lay Troyes before us—a town which had a
burning interest for us boys; for we remembered
how seven years before, in the pastures of Dom-
remy, the Sunflower came with his black flag and
brought us the shameful news of the Treaty of
Troyes—that treaty which gave France to England,
and a daughter of our royal line in marriage to the
Butcher of Agincourt. That poor town was not to
blame, of course; yet we flushed hot with that old
memory, and hoped there would be a misunder-
standing here, for we dearly wanted to storm the
place and burn it. It was powerfully garrisoned by
English and Burgundian soldiery, and was expect-
ing re-enforcements from Paris. Before night we
camped before its gates and made rough work with
a sortie which marched out against us.

Joan summoned Troyes to surrender. Its com-

---

mandant, seeing that she had no artillery, scoffed at
the idea, and sent her a grossly insulting reply.
Five days we consulted and negotiated. No result.
The King was about to turn back now and give up.
He was afraid to go on, leaving this strong place in
his rear. Then La Hire put in a word, with a slap
in it for some of his Majesty's advisers:

"The Maid of Orleans undertook this expedition
of her own motion; and it is my mind that it is her
judgment that should be followed here, and not
that of any other, let him be of whatsoever breed
and standing he may."

There was wisdom and righteousness in that. So
the King sent for the Maid, and asked her how she
thought the prospect looked. She said, without
any tone of doubt or question in her voice:

"In three days' time the place is ours."

The smug Chancellor put in a word now:

"If we were sure of it we would wait here six
days."

"Six days, forsooth! Name of God, man, we
will enter the gates to-morrow!"

Then she mounted, and rode her lines, crying out:

"Make preparation—to your work, friends, to
your work! We assault at dawn!"

She worked hard that night; slaving away with
her own hands like a common soldier. She ordered
fascines and fagots to be prepared and thrown into
the fosse, thereby to bridge it; and in this rough
labor she took a man's share.

---

At dawn she took her place at the head of the
storming force and the bugles blew the assault. At
that moment a flag of truce was flung to the breeze
from the walls, and Troyes surrendered without
firing a shot.

The next day the King with Joan at his side and
the Paladin bearing her banner entered the town in
state at the head of the army. And a goodly army
it was now, for it had been growing ever bigger and
bigger from the first.

And now a curious thing happened. By the
terms of the treaty made with the town the garrison
of English and Burgundian soldiery were to be
allowed to carry away their "goods" with them.
This was well, for otherwise how would they buy
the wherewithal to live? Very well; these people
were all to go out by the one gate, and at the time
set for them to depart we young fellows went to
that gate, along with the Dwarf, to see the march-
out. Presently here they came in an interminable
file, the foot-soldiers in the lead. As they ap-
proached one could see that each bore a burden of
a bulk and weight to sorely tax his strength; and we
said among ourselves, truly these folk are well off
for poor common soldiers. When they were come
nearer, what do you think? Every rascal of them
had a French prisoner on his back! They were
carrying away their "goods," you see—their prop-
erty—strictly according to the permission granted
by the treaty.

---

Now think how clever that was, how ingenious.
What could a body say? what could a body do?
For certainly these people were within their right.
These prisoners were property; nobody could deny
that. My dears, if those had been English cap-
tives, conceive of the richness of that booty! For
English prisoners had been scarce and precious for
a hundred years; whereas it was a different matter
with French prisoners. They had been over-
abundant for a century. The possessor of a French
prisoner did not hold him long for ransom, as a
rule, but presently killed him to save the cost of his
keep. This shows you how small was the value of
such a possession in those times. When we took
Troyes a calf was worth thirty francs, a sheep six-
teen, a French prisoner eight. It was an enormous
price for those other animals—a price which natur-
ally seems incredible to you. It was the war, you
see. It worked two ways: it made meat dear and
prisoners cheap.

Well, here were these poor Frenchmen being
carried off. What could we do? Very little of a
permanent sort, but we did what we could. We
sent a messenger flying to Joan, and we and the
French guards halted the procession for a parley—
to gain time, you see. A big Burgundian lost his
temper and swore a great oath that none should stop
him; he would go, and would take his prisoner with
him. But we blocked him off, and he saw that he
was mistaken about going—he couldn't do it. He

---

exploded into the maddest cursings and revilings,
then, and, unlashing his prisoner from his back, stood
him up, all bound and helpless; then drew his
knife, and said to us with a light of sarcastic triumph
in his eye:

"I may not carry him away, you say—yet he is
mine, none will dispute it. Since I may not convey
him hence, this property of mine, there is another
way. Yes, I can kill him; not even the dullest
among you will question that right. Ah, you had
not thought of that—vermin!"

That poor starved fellow begged us with his piteous
eyes to save him; then spoke, and said he had a
wife and little children at home. Think how it
wrung our heartstrings. But what could we do?
The Burgundian was within his right. We could
only beg and plead for the prisoner. Which we
did. And the Burgundian enjoyed it. He stayed
his hand to hear more of it, and laugh at it. That
stung. Then the Dwarf said:

"Prithee, young sirs, let me beguile him; for
when a matter requiring persuasion is to the fore, I
have indeed a gift in that sort, as any will tell you
that know me well. You smile; and that is punish-
ment for my vanity, and fairly earned, I grant it
you. Still, if I may toy a little, just a little—"
saying which he stepped to the Burgundian and
began a fair soft speech, all of goodly and gentle
tenor; and in the midst he mentioned the Maid;
and was going on to say how she out of her good

---

heart would prize and praise this compassionate deed
which he was about to—

It was as far as he got. The Burgundian burst
into his smooth oration with an insult leveled at
Joan of Arc. We sprang forward, but the Dwarf,
his face all livid, brushed us aside and said, in a
most grave and earnest way:

"I crave your patience. Am not I her guard of
honor? This is my affair."

And saying this he suddenly shot his right hand
out and gripped the great Burgundian by the throat,
and so held him upright on his feet. "You have
insulted the Maid," he said; "and the Maid is
France. The tongue that does that earns a long
furlough."

One heard the muffled cracking of bones. The
Burgundian's eyes began to protrude from their
sockets and stare with a leaden dullness at vacancy.
The color deepened in his face and became an
opaque purple. His hands hung down limp, his
body collapsed with a shiver, every muscle relaxed
its tension and ceased from its function. The Dwarf
took away his hand and the column of inert mortality
sank mushily to the ground.

We struck the bonds from the prisoner and told
him he was free. His crawling humbleness changed
to frantic joy in a moment, and his ghastly fear to a
childish rage. He flew at that dead corpse and
kicked it, spat in its face, danced upon it, crammed
mud into its mouth, laughing, jeering, cursing, and

---

volleying forth indecencies and bestialities like a
drunken fiend. It was a thing to be expected:
soldiering makes few saints. Many of the on-
lookers laughed, others were indifferent, none was
surprised. But presently in his mad caperings the
freed man capered within reach of the waiting file,
and another Burgundian promptly slipped a knife
through his neck, and down he went with a death-
shriek, his brilliant artery-blood spurting ten feet as
straight and bright as a ray of light. There was a
great burst of jolly laughter all around from friend
and foe alike; and thus closed one of the pleasantest
incidents of my checkered military life.

And now came Joan hurrying, and deeply
troubled. She considered the claim of the garri-
son, then said:

"You have right upon your side. It is plain.
It was a careless word to put in the treaty, and
covers too much. But ye may not take these poor
men away. They are French, and I will not have
it. The King shall ransom them, every one. Wait
till I send you word from him; and hurt no hair of
their heads; for I tell you, I who speak, that that
would cost you very dear."

That settled it. The prisoners were safe for one
while, anyway. Then she rode back eagerly and
required that thing of the King, and would listen to
no paltering and no excuses. So the King told her to
have her way, and she rode straight back and bought
the captives free in his name and let them go.

---

CHAPTER XXXV.

It was here that we saw again the Grand Master of
the King's Household, in whose castle Joan was
guest when she tarried at Chinon in those first days
of her coming out of her own country. She made
him Bailiff of Troyes now by the King's permis-
sion.

And now we marched again; Châlons surrendered
to us; and there by Châlons in a talk, Joan, being
asked if she had no fears for the future, said yes,
one—treachery. Who could believe it? who could
dream it? And yet in a sense it was prophecy.
Truly, man is a pitiful animal.

We marched, marched, kept on marching; and at
last, on the 16th of July, we came in sight of our
goal, and saw the great cathedral towers of Rheims
rise out of the distance! Huzza after huzza swept
the army from van to rear; and as for Joan of
Arc, there where she sat her horse gazing, clothed
all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face
a deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth, oh, she was
not flesh, she was a spirit! Her sublime mission
was closing—closing in flawless triumph. To-

---

morrow she could say, "It is finished—let me go
free."

We camped, and the hurry and rush and turmoil
of the grand preparations began. The Archbishop
and a great deputation arrived; and after these came
flock after flock, crowd after crowd, of citizens and
country folk, hurrahing, in, with banners and music,
and flowed over the camp, one rejoicing inundation
after another, everybody drunk with happiness.
And all night long Rheims was hard at work, ham-
mering away, decorating the town, building triumphal
arches and clothing the ancient cathedral within and
without in a glory of opulent splendors.

We moved betimes in the morning; the corona-
tion ceremonies would begin at nine and last five
hours. We were aware that the garrison of English
and Burgundian soldiers had given up all thought of
resisting the Maid, and that we should find the gates
standing hospitably open and the whole city ready
to welcome us with enthusiasm.

It was a delicious morning, brilliant with sunshine,
but cool and fresh and inspiring. The army was in
great form, and fine to see, as it uncoiled from its
lair fold by fold, and stretched away on the final
march of the peaceful Coronation Campaign.

Joan, on her black horse, with the Lieutenant-
General and the personal staff grouped about her,
took post for a final review and a good-bye; for she
was not expecting to ever be a soldier again, or ever
serve with these or any other soldiers any more after

---

this day. The army knew this, and believed it was
looking for the last time upon the girlish face of its
invincible little Chief, its pet, its pride, its darling,
whom it had ennobled in its private heart with
nobilities of its own creation, calling her "Daughter
of God," "Saviour of France," "Victory's Sweet-
heart," "the Page of Christ," together with still
softer titles which were simply naïf and frank endear-
ments such as men are used to confer upon children
whom they love. And so one saw a new thing
now; a thing bred of the emotion that was present
there on both sides. Always before, in the march-
past, the battalions had gone swinging by in a storm
of cheers, heads up and eyes flashing, the drums
rolling, the bands braying pæans of victory; but
now there was nothing of that. But for one im-
pressive sound, one could have closed his eyes and
imagined himself in a world of the dead. That one
sound was all that visited the ear in the summer
stillness—just that one sound—the muffled tread
of the marching host. As the serried masses drifted
by, the men put their right hands up to their
temples, palms to the front, in military salute, turn-
ing their eyes upon Joan's face in mute God-bless-
you and farewell, and keeping them there while they
could. They still kept their hands up in reverent
salute many steps after they had passed by. Every
time Joan put her handkerchief to her eyes you
could see a little quiver of emotion crinkle along the
faces of the files.

---

The march-past after a victory is a thing to drive
the heart mad with jubilation; but this one was a
thing to break it.

We rode now to the King's lodging, which was
the Archbishop's country palace; and he was pres-
ently ready, and we galloped off and took position
at the head of the army. By this time the country
people were arriving in multitudes from every direc-
tion and massing themselves on both sides of the
road to get sight of Joan—just as had been done
every day since our first day's march began. Our
march now lay through the grassy plain, and those
peasants made a dividing double border for that
plain. They stretched right down through it, a
broad belt of bright colors on each side of the road;
for every peasant girl and woman in it had a white
jacket on her body and a crimson skirt on the rest
of her. Endless borders made of poppies and lilies
stretching away in front of us—that is what it
looked like. And that is the kind of lane we had
been marching through all these days. Not a lane
between multitudinous flowers standing upright on
their stems—no, these flowers were always kneel-
ing; kneeling, these human flowers, with their hands
and faces lifted toward Joan of Arc, and the grateful
tears streaming down. And all along, those closest
to the road hugged her feet and kissed them and laid
their wet cheeks fondly against them. I never,
during all those days, saw any of either sex stand
while she passed, nor any man keep his head cov-

---

ered. Afterwards in the Great Trial these touching
scenes were used as a weapon against her. She had
been made an object of adoration by the people, and
this was proof that she was a heretic—so claimed
that unjust court.

As we drew near the city the curving long sweep
of ramparts and towers was gay with fluttering flags
and black with masses of people; and all the air
was vibrant with the crash of artillery and gloomed
with drifting clouds of smoke. We entered the
gates in state and moved in procession through the
city, with all the guilds and industries in holiday
costume marching in our rear with their banners;
and all the route was hedged with a huzzaing crush
of people, and all the windows were full and all the
roofs; and from the balconies hung costly stuffs of
rich colors; and the waving of handkerchiefs, seen
in perspective through a long vista, was like a snow-
storm.

Joan's name had been introduced into the prayers
of the Church—an honor theretofore restricted to
royalty. But she had a dearer honor and an honor
more to be proud of, from a humbler source: the
common people had had leaden medals struck which
bore her effigy and her escutcheon, and these they
wore as charms. One saw them everywhere.

From the Archbishop's Palace, where we halted,
and where the King and Joan were to lodge, the
King sent to the Abbey Church of St. Remi, which
was over toward the gate by which we had entered

---

the city, for the Sainte Ampoule, or flask of holy
oil. This oil was not earthly oil; it was made in
heaven; the flask also. The flask, with the oil in it,
was brought down from heaven by a dove. It was
sent down to St. Remi just as he was going to
baptize King Clovis, who had become a Christian.
I know this to be true. I had known it long before;
for Père Fronte told me in Domremy. I cannot
tell you how strange and awful it made me feel
when I saw that flask and knew I was looking with
my own eyes upon a thing which had actually been
in heaven; a thing which had been seen by angels,
perhaps; and by God Himself of a certainty, for
He sent it. And I was looking upon it—I. At
one time I could have touched it. But I was afraid;
for I could not know but that God had touched it.
It is most probable that He had.

From this flask Clovis had been anointed; and
from it all the kings of France had been anointed
since. Yes, ever since the time of Clovis; and that
was nine hundred years. And so, as I have said,
that flask of holy oil was sent for, while we waited.
A coronation without that would not have been a
coronation at all, in my belief.

Now in order to get the flask, a most ancient
ceremonial had to be gone through with; otherwise
the Abbé of St. Remi, hereditary guardian in per-
petuity of the oil, would not deliver it. So, in ac-
cordance with custom, the King deputed five great
nobles to ride in solemn state and richly armed and

---

accoutered, they and their steeds, to the Abbey
Church as a guard of honor to the Archbishop of
Rheims and his canons, who were to bear the King's
demand for the oil. When the five great lords were
ready to start, they knelt in a row and put up their
mailed hands before their faces, palm joined to
palm, and swore upon their lives to conduct the
sacred vessel safely, and safely restore it again to
the Church of St. Remi after the anointing of the
King. The Archbishop and his subordinates, thus
nobly escorted, took their way to St. Remi. The
Archbishop was in grand costume, with his mitre on
his head and his cross in his hand. At the door of
St. Remi they halted and formed, to receive the
holy phial. Soon one heard the deep tones of the
organ and of chanting men; then one saw a long
file of lights approaching through the dim church.
And so came the Abbot, in his sacerdotal panoply,
bearing the phial, with his people following after.
He delivered it, with solemn ceremonies, to the
Archbishop; then the march back began, and it
was most impressive; for it moved, the whole way,
between two multitudes of men and women who lay
flat upon their faces and prayed in dumb silence and
in dread while that awful thing went by that had
been in heaven.

This august company arrived at the great west
door of the cathedral; and as the Archbishop
entered a noble anthem rose and filled the vast
building. The cathedral was packed with people—

---

people in thousands. Only a wide space down the
center had been kept free. Down this space walked
the Archbishop and his canons, and after them fol-
lowed those five stately figures in splendid harness,
each bearing his feudal banner—and riding!

Oh, that was a magnificent thing to see. Riding
down the cavernous vastness of the building through
the rich lights streaming in long rays from the pic-
tured windows—oh, there was never anything so
grand!

They rode clear to the choir—as much as four
hundred feet from the door, it was said. Then the
Archbishop dismissed them, and they made deep
obeisance till their plumes touched their horses'
necks, then made those proud prancing and mincing
and dancing creatures go backwards all the way to
the door—which was pretty to see, and graceful;
then they stood them on their hind-feet and spun
them around and plunged away and disappeared.

For some minutes there was a deep hush, a wait-
ing pause; a silence so profound that it was as if all
those packed thousands there were steeped in dream-
less slumber—why, you could even notice the faint-
est sounds, like the drowsy buzzing of insects; then
came a mighty flood of rich strains from four hun-
dred silver trumpets, and then, framed in the pointed
archway of the great west door, appeared Joan and
the King. They advanced slowly, side by side,
through a tempest of welcome—explosion after ex-
plosion of cheers and cries, mingled with the deep

---

thunders of the organ and rolling tides of triumphant
song from chanting choirs. Behind Joan and the
King came the Paladin with the Banner displayed;
and a majestic figure he was, and most proud and
lofty in his bearing, for he knew that the people
were marking him and taking note of the gorgeous
state dress which covered his armor.

At his side was the Sire d'Albret, proxy for the
Constable of France, bearing the Sword of State.

After these, in order of rank, came a body royally
attired representing the lay peers of France; it con-
sisted of three princes of the blood, and La Tre-
mouille and the young De Laval brothers.

These were followed by the representatives of the
ecclesiastical peers—the Archbishop of Rheims, and
the Bishops of Laon, Châlons, Orleans, and one
other.

Behind these came the Grand Staff, all our great
generals and famous names, and everybody was eager
to get a sight of them. Through all the din one
could hear shouts all along that told you where two
of them were: "Live the Bastard of Orleans!"
"Satan La Hire forever!"

The august procession reached its appointed place
in time, and the solemnities of the Coronation began.
They were long and imposing—with prayers, and
anthems, and sermons, and everything that is right
for such occasions; and Joan was at the King's side
all these hours, with her Standard in her hand. But
at last came the grand act: the King took the oath,

---

he was anointed with the sacred oil; a splendid
personage, followed by train-bearers and other at-
tendants, approached, bearing the Crown of France
upon a cushion, and kneeling offered it. The King
seemed to hesitate—in fact, did hesitate; for he
put out his hand and then stopped with it there in
the air over the crown, the fingers in the attitude of
taking hold of it. But that was for only a moment
—though a moment is a notable something when it
stops the heart-beat of twenty thousand people and
makes them catch their breath. Yes, only a mo-
ment; then he caught Joan's eye, and she gave him
a look with all the joy of her thankful great soul in
it, then he smiled, and took the Crown of France in
his hand, and right finely and right royally lifted it
up and set it upon his head.

Then what a crash there was! All about us cries
and cheers, and the chanting of the choirs and
groaning of the organ; and outside the clamoring
of the bells and the booming of the cannon.

The fantastic dream, the incredible dream, the
impossible dream of the peasant child stood fulfilled:
the English power was broken, the Heir of France
was crowned.

She was like one transfigured, so divine was the
joy that shone in her face as she sank to her knees
at the King's feet and looked up at him through her
tears. Her lips were quivering, and her words came
soft and low and broken:

"Now, O gentle King, is the pleasure of God

---

accomplished according to his command that you
should come to Rheims and receive the crown that
belongeth of right to you, and unto none other.
My work which was given me to do is finished; give
me your peace, and let me go back to my mother,
who is poor and old, and has need of me."

The King raised her up, and there before all that
host he praised her great deeds in most noble terms;
and there he confirmed her nobility and titles,
making her the equal of a count in rank, and also
appointed a household and officers for her accord-
ing to her dignity; and then he said:

"You have saved the crown. Speak—require—
demand; and whatsoever grace you ask it shall be
granted, though it make the kingdom poor to meet
it."

Now that was fine, that was royal. Joan was on
her knees again straightway, and said:

"Then, O gentle King, if out of your compas-
sion you will speak the word, I pray you give
commandment that my village, poor and hard
pressed by reason of the war, may have its taxes
remitted."

"It is so commanded. Say on."

"That is all."

"All? Nothing but that?"

"It is all. I have no other desire."

"But that is nothing—less than nothing. Ask
—do not be afraid."

"Indeed, I cannot, gentle King. Do not press

---

me. I will not have aught else, but only this
alone."

The King seemed nonplussed, and stood still a
moment, as if trying to comprehend and realize the
full stature of this strange unselfishness. Then he
raised his head and said:

"She has won a kingdom and crowned its King;
and all she asks and all she will take is this poor
grace—and even this is for others, not for herself.
And it is well; her act being proportioned to the
dignity of one who carries in her head and heart
riches which outvalue any that any King could add,
though he gave his all. She shall have her way.
Now, therefore, it is decreed that from this day
forth Domremy, natal village of Joan of Arc, De-
liverer of France, called the Maid of Orleans, is
freed from all taxation forever." Whereat the silver
horns blew a jubilant blast.

There, you see, she had had a vision of this very
scene the time she was in a trance in the pastures of
Domremy, and we asked her to name the boon she
would demand of the King if he should ever chance
to tell her she might claim one. But whether she
had the vision or not, this act showed that after all
the dizzy grandeurs that had come upon her, she
was still the same simple, unselfish creature that she
was that day.

Yes, Charles VII. remitted those taxes "forever."
Often the gratitude of kings and nations fades and
their promises are forgotten or deliberately violated;

---

but you, who are children of France, should remem-
ber with pride that France has kept this one faith-
fully. Sixty-three years have gone by since that
day. The taxes of the region wherein Domremy
lies have been collected sixty-three times since then,
and all the villages of that region have paid except
that one—Domremy. The tax-gatherer never visits
Domremy. Domremy has long ago forgotten what
that dreaded sorrow-sowing apparition is like.
Sixty-three tax-books have been filled meantime,
and they lie yonder with the other public records,
and any may see them that desire it. At the top of
every page in the sixty-three books stands the name
of a village, and below that name its weary burden
of taxation is figured out and displayed; in the case
of all save one. It is true, just as I tell you. In
each of the sixty-three books there is a page headed
"Domremi," but under that name not a figure ap-
pears. Where the figures should be, there are three
words written; and the same words have been written
every year for all these years; yes, it is a blank
page, with always those grateful words lettered
across the face of it—a touching memorial. Thus:

---

"Nothing—the Maid of Orleans." How
brief it is; yet how much it says! It is the nation
speaking. You have the spectacle of that unsenti-
mental thing, a Government, making reverence to
that name and saying to its agent, "Uncover and
pass on; it is France that commands." Yes, the
promise has been kept; it will be kept always;
"forever" was the King's word.*

It was faithfully kept during three hundred and sixty years and
more; then the over-confident octogenarian's prophecy failed. During
the tumult of the French Revolution the promise was forgotten and the
grace withdrawn. It has remained in disuse ever since. Joan never
asked to be remembered, but France has remembered her with an inex-
tinguishable love and reverence: Joan never asked for a statue, but
France has lavished them upon her; Joan never asked for a church for
Domremy, but France is building one; Joan never asked for saintship,
but even that is impending. Everything which Joan of Arc did not
ask for has been given her, and with a noble profusion; but the one
humble little thing which she did ask for and get has been taken away
from her. There is something infinitely pathetic about this. France
owes Domremy a hundred years of taxes, and could hardly find a citizen
within her borders who would vote against the payment of the debt.—
Note by the Translator.

At two o'clock in the afternoon the ceremonies of
the Coronation came at last to an end; then the
procession formed once more, with Joan and the
King at its head, and took up its solemn march
through the midst of the church, all instruments and
all people making such clamor of rejoicing noises as
was, indeed, a marvel to hear. And so ended the
third of the great days of Joan's life. And how
close together they stand—May 8th, June 18th,
July 17th!

---

CHAPTER XXXVI.

We mounted and rode, a spectacle to remember,
a most noble display of rich vestments and
nodding plumes, and as we moved between the
banked multitudes they sank down all along abreast
of us as we advanced, like grain before the reaper,
and kneeling hailed with a rousing welcome the con-
secrated King and his companion the Deliverer of
France. But by and by when we had paraded about
the chief parts of the city and were come near to the
end of our course, we being now approaching the
Archbishop's palace, one saw on the right, hard by
the inn that is called the Zebra, a strange thing—
two men not kneeling but standing! Standing in
the front rank of the kneelers; unconscious, trans-
fixed, staring. Yes, and clothed in the coarse garb
of the peasantry, these two. Two halberdiers sprang
at them in a fury to teach them better manners; but
just as they seized them Joan cried out "Forbear!"
and slid from her saddle and flung her arms about
one of those peasants, calling him by all manner of
endearing names, and sobbing. For it was her
father; and the other was her uncle, Laxart.

The news flew everywhere, and shouts of welcome

---

were raised, and in just one little moment those two
despised and unknown plebeians were become
famous and popular and envied, and everybody was
in a fever to get sight of them and be able to say,
all their lives long, that they had seen the father of
Joan of Arc and the brother of her mother. How
easy it was for her to do miracles like to this! She
was like the sun; on whatsoever dim and humble
object her rays fell, that thing was straightway
drowned in glory.

All graciously the King said:

"Bring them to me."

And she brought them; she radiant with happi-
ness and affection, they trembling and scared, with
their caps in their shaking hands; and there before
all the world the King gave them his hand to kiss,
while the people gazed in envy and admiration; and
he said to old D'Arc:

"Give God thanks for that you are father to this
child, this dispenser of immortalities. You who
bear a name that will still live in the mouths of men
when all the race of kings has been forgotten, it is
not meet that you bare your head before the fleeting
fames and dignities of a day—cover yourself!"
And truly he looked right fine and princely when he
said that. Then he gave order that the Bailly of
Rheims be brought; and when he was come, and
stood bent low and bare, the King said to him,
"These two are guests of France;" and bade him
use them hospitably.

---

I may as well say now as later, that Papa D'Arc
and Laxart were stopping in that little Zebra inn,
and that there they remained. Finer quarters were
offered them by the Bailly, also public distinctions
and brave entertainment; but they were frightened
at these projects, they being only humble and igno-
rant peasants; so they begged off, and had peace.
They could not have enjoyed such things. Poor
souls, they did not even know what to do with their
hands, and it took all their attention to keep from
treading on them. The Bailly did the best he could
in the circumstances. He made the innkeeper place
a whole floor at their disposal, and told him to pro-
vide everything they might desire, and charge all to
the city. Also the Bailly gave them a horse apiece
and furnishings; which so overwhelmed them with
pride and delight and astonishment that they
couldn't speak a word; for in their lives they had
never dreamed of wealth like this, and could not
believe, at first, that the horses were real and would
not dissolve to a mist and blow away. They could
not unglue their minds from those grandeurs, and
were always wrenching the conversation out of its
groove and dragging the matter of animals into it,
so that they could say "my horse" here, and "my
horse" there and yonder and all around, and taste
the words and lick their chops over them, and
spread their legs and hitch their thumbs in their
armpits, and feel as the good God feels when He
looks out on His fleets of constellations plowing

---

the awful deeps of space and reflects with satis-
faction that they are His—all His. Well, they
were the happiest old children one ever saw, and the
simplest.

The city gave a grand banquet to the King and
Joan in mid-afternoon, and to the Court and the
Grand Staff; and about the middle of it Père d'Arc
and Laxart were sent for, but would not venture
until it was promised that they might sit in a gallery
and be all by themselves and see all that was to be
seen and yet be unmolested. And so they sat there
and looked down upon the splendid spectacle, and
were moved till the tears ran down their cheeks to
see the unbelievable honors that were paid to their
small darling, and how naïvely serene and unafraid
she sat there with those consuming glories beating
upon her.

But at last her serenity was broken up. Yes, it
stood the strain of the King's gracious speech;
and of D'Alençon's praiseful words, and the Bas-
tard's; and even La Hire's thunder-blast, which
took the place by storm; but at last, as I have said,
they brought a force to bear which was too strong
for her. For at the close the King put up his hand
to command silence, and so waited, with his hand
up, till every sound was dead and it was as if one
could almost feel the stillness, so profound it was.
Then out of some remote corner of that vast place
there rose a plaintive voice, and in tones most tender
and sweet and rich came floating through that en-

---

chanted hush our poor old simple song "L'Arbre
Fée le Bourlemont!" and then Joan broke down
and put her face in her hands and cried. Yes, you
see, all in a moment the pomps and grandeurs dis-
solved away and she was a little child again herding
her sheep with the tranquil pastures stretched about
her, and war and wounds and blood and death and
the mad frenzy and turmoil of battle a dream. Ah,
that shows you the power of music, that magician
of magicians, who lifts his wand and says his mys-
terious word and all things real pass away and the
phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in
flesh.

That was the King's invention, that sweet and
dear surprise. Indeed, he had fine things hidden
away in his nature, though one seldom got a glimpse
of them, with that scheming Tremouille and those
others always standing in the light, and he so indo-
lently content to save himself fuss and argument and
let them have their way.

At the fall of night we the Domremy contingent
of the personal staff were with the father and uncle
at the inn, in their private parlor, brewing generous
drinks and breaking ground for a homely talk about
Domremy and the neighbors, when a large parcel
arrived from Joan to be kept till she came; and
soon she came herself and sent her guard away,
saying she would take one of her father's rooms and
sleep under his roof, and so be at home again. We
of the staff rose and stood, as was meet, until she

---

made us sit. Then she turned and saw that the two
old men had gotten up too, and were standing in an
embarrassed and unmilitary way; which made her
want to laugh, but she kept it in, as not wishing to
hurt them; and got them to their seats and snug-
gled down between them, and took a hand of each
of them upon her knees and nestled her own hands
in them, and said:

"Now we will have no more ceremony, but be
kin and playmates as in other times; for I am done
with the great wars now, and you two will take me
home with you, and I shall see—" She stopped,
and for a moment her happy face sobered, as if a
doubt or a presentiment had flitted through her
mind; then it cleared again, and she said, with a
passionate yearning, "Oh, if the day were but come
and we could start!"

The old father was surprised, and said:

"Why, child, are you in earnest? Would you
leave doing these wonders that make you to be
praised by everybody while there is still so much
glory to be won; and would you go out from this
grand comradeship with princes and generals to be a
drudging villager again and a nobody? It is not
rational."

"No," said the uncle, Laxart, "it is amazing to
hear, and indeed not understandable. It is a stranger
thing to hear her say she will stop the soldiering than
it was to hear her say she would begin it; and I who
speak to you can say in all truth that that was the

---

strangest word that ever I had heard till this day and
hour. I would it could be explained."

"It is not difficult," said Joan. "I was not ever
fond of wounds and suffering, nor fitted by my
nature to inflict them; and quarrelings did always
distress me, and noise and tumult were against my
liking, my disposition being toward peace and quiet-
ness, and love for all things that have life; and
being made like this, how could I bear to think of
wars and blood, and the pain that goes with them,
and the sorrow and mourning that follow after?
But by his angels God laid His great commands
upon me, and could I disobey? I did as I was bid.
Did He command me to do many things? No; only
two: to raise the siege of Orleans, and crown the
King at Rheims. The task is finished, and I am free.
Has ever a poor soldier fallen in my sight, whether
friend or foe, and I not felt his pain in my own
body, and the grief of his home-mates in my own
heart? No, not one; and, oh, it is such bliss to
know that my release is won, and that I shall not
any more see these cruel things or suffer these tor-
tures of the mind again! Then why should I not
go to my village and be as I was before? It is
heaven! and ye wonder that I desire it. Ah, ye are
men—just men! My mother would understand."

They didn't quite know what to say; so they sat
still awhile, looking pretty vacant. Then old D'Arc
said:

"Yes, your mother—that is true. I never saw

---

such a woman. She worries, and worries, and
worries; and wakes nights, and lies so, thinking—
that is, worrying; worrying about you. And when
the night-storms go raging along, she moans and
says, 'Ah, God pity her, she is out in this with her
poor wet soldiers.' And when the lightning glares
and the thunder crashes she wrings her hands and
trembles, saying, 'It is like the awful cannon and
the flash, and yonder somewhere she is riding down
upon the spouting guns and I not there to protect
her.'"

"Ah, poor mother, it is pity, it is pity!"

"Yes, a most strange woman, as I have noticed
a many times. When there is news of a victory
and all the village goes mad with pride and joy, she
rushes here and there in a maniacal frenzy till she
finds out the one only thing she cares to know—
that you are safe; then down she goes on her knees
in the dirt and praises God as long as there is any
breath left in her body; and all on your account,
for she never mentions the battle once. And always
she says, 'Now it is over—now France is saved—
now she will come home'—and always is disap-
pointed and goes about mourning."

"Don't, father! it breaks my heart. I will be
so good to her when I get home. I will do her
work for her, and be her comfort, and she shall not
suffer any more through me."

There was some more talk of this sort, then Uncle
Laxart said:

---

"You have done the will of God, dear, and are
quits; it is true, and none may deny it; but what
of the King? You are his best soldier; what if he
command you to stay?"

That was a crusher—and sudden! It took Joan
a moment or two to recover from the shock of it;
then she said, quite simply and resignedly:

"The King is my Lord; I am his servant." She
was silent and thoughtful a little while, then she
brightened up and said, cheerily, "But let us drive
such thoughts away—this is no time for them.
Tell me about home."

So the two old gossips talked and talked; talked
about everything and everybody in the village; and
it was good to hear. Joan out of her kindness tried
to get us into the conversation, but that failed, of
course. She was the Commander-in-Chief, we were
nobodies; her name was the mightiest in France,
we were invisible atoms; she was the comrade of
princes and heroes, we of the humble and obscure;
she held rank above all Personages and all Puissances
whatsoever in the whole earth, by right of bearing
her commission direct from God. To put it in one
word, she was Joan of Arc—and when that is
said, all is said. To us she was divine. Between
her and us lay the bridgeless abyss which that word
implies. We could not be familiar with her. No,
you can see yourselves that that would have been
impossible.

And yet she was so human, too, and so good and

---

kind and dear and loving and cheery and charm-
ing and unspoiled and unaffected! Those are all
the words I think of now, but they are not enough;
no, they are too few and colorless and meager to tell
it all, or tell the half. Those simple old men didn't
realize her; they couldn't; they had never known
any people but human beings, and so they had no
other standard to measure her by. To them, after
their first little shyness had worn off, she was just a
girl—that was all. It was amazing. It made one
shiver, sometimes, to see how calm and easy and
comfortable they were in her presence, and hear
them talk to her exactly as they would have talked
to any other girl in France.

Why, that simple old Laxart sat up there and
droned out the most tedious and empty tale one ever
heard, and neither he nor Papa D'Arc ever gave a
thought to the badness of the etiquette of it, or ever
suspected that that foolish tale was anything but
dignified and valuable history. There was not an
atom of value in it; and whilst they thought it dis-
tressing and pathetic, it was in fact not pathetic at
all, but actually ridiculous. At least it seemed so
to me, and it seems so yet. Indeed, I know it was,
because it made Joan laugh; and the more sorrow-
ful it got the more it made her laugh; and the
Paladin said that he could have laughed himself if
she had not been there, and Noël Rainguesson said
the same. It was about old Laxart going to a
funeral there at Domremy two or three weeks back.

---

He had spots all over his face and hands, and he got
Joan to rub some healing ointment on them, and
while she was doing it, and comforting him, and
trying to say pitying things to him, he told her how
it happened. And first he asked her if she remem-
bered that black bull calf that she left behind when
she came away, and she said indeed she did, and he
was a dear, and she loved him so, and was he well?
—and just drowned him in questions about that
creature. And he said it was a young bull now,
and very frisky; and he was to bear a principal
hand at a funeral; and she said, "The bull?" and
he said, "No, myself;" but said the bull did take
a hand, but not because of his being invited, for he
wasn't; but anyway he was away over beyond the
Fairy Tree, and fell asleep on the grass with his
Sunday funeral clothes on, and a long black rag on
his hat and hanging down his back; and when he
woke he saw by the sun how late it was, and not a
moment to lose; and jumped up terribly worried,
and saw the young bull grazing there, and thought
maybe he could ride part way on him and gain
time; so he tied a rope around the bull's body to
hold on by, and put a halter on him to steer with,
and jumped on and started; but it was all new to
the bull, and he was discontented with it, and scur-
ried around and bellowed and reared and pranced,
and Uncle Laxart was satisfied, and wanted to get
off and go by the next bull or some other way that
was quieter, but he didn't dare try; and it was get-

---

ting very warm for him, too, and disturbing and
wearisome, and not proper for Sunday; but by and
by the bull lost all his temper, and went tearing
down the slope with his tail in the air and bellowing
in the most awful way; and just in the edge of the
village he knocked down some beehives, and the
bees turned out and joined the excursion, and soared
along in a black cloud that nearly hid those other
two from sight, and prodded them both, and jabbed
them and speared them and spiked them, and made
them bellow and shriek, and shriek and bellow; and
here they came roaring through the village like a
hurricane, and took the funeral procession right in
the center, and sent that section of it sprawling, and
galloped over it, and the rest scattered apart and
fled screeching in every direction, every person with
a layer of bees on him, and not a rag of that funeral
left but the corpse; and finally the bull broke for
the river and jumped in, and when they fished Uncle
Laxart out he was nearly drowned, and his face
looked like a pudding with raisins in it. And then
he turned around, this old simpleton, and looked a
long time in a dazed way at Joan where she had her
face in a cushion, dying, apparently, and says:

"What do you reckon she is laughing at?"

And old D'Arc stood looking at her the same
way, sort of absently scratching his head; but had
to give it up, and said he didn't know—"must
have been something that happened when we weren't
noticing."

---

Yes, both of those old people thought that that
tale was pathetic; whereas to my mind it was purely
ridiculous, and not in any way valuable to any one.
It seemed so to me then, and it seems so to me yet.
And as for history, it does not resemble history, for
the office of history is to furnish serious and im-
portant facts that teach; whereas this strange and
useless event teaches nothing; nothing that I can
see, except not to ride a bull to a funeral; and
surely no reflecting person needs to be taught that.

---

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Now these were nobles, you know, by decree of the
King!—these precious old infants. But they
did not realize it; they could not be called conscious
of it; it was an abstraction, a phantom; to them it
had no substance; their minds could not take hold
of it. No, they did not bother about their nobility;
they lived in their horses. The horses were solid;
they were visible facts, and would make a mighty
stir in Domremy. Presently something was said
about the Coronation, and old D'Arc said it was go-
ing to be a grand thing to be able to say, when they
got home, that they were present in the very town
itself when it happened. Joan looked troubled, and
said:

"Ah, that reminds me. You were here and you
didn't send me word. In the town, indeed! Why,
you could have sat with the other nobles, and been
welcome; and could have looked upon the crowning
itself, and carried that home to tell. Ah, why did
you use me so, and send me no word?"

The old father was embarrassed, now, quite visibly
embarrassed, and had the air of one who does not

---

quite know what to say. But Joan was looking up
in his face, her hands upon his shoulders—waiting.
He had to speak; so presently he drew her to his
breast, which was heaving with emotion; and he
said, getting out his words with difficulty:

"There, hide your face, child, and let your old
father humble himself and make his confession. I
—I—don't you see, don't you understand?—I
could not know that these grandeurs would not turn
your young head—it would be only natural. I
might shame you before these great per—"

"Father!"

"And then I was afraid, as remembering that cruel
thing I said once in my sinful anger. Oh, appointed
of God to be a soldier, and the greatest in the land!
and in my ignorant anger I said I would drown you
with my own hands if you unsexed yourself and
brought shame to your name and family. Ah, how
could I ever have said it, and you so good and dear
and innocent! I was afraid; for I was guilty. You
understand it now, my child, and you forgive?"

Do you see? Even that poor groping old land-
crab, with his skull full of pulp, had pride. Isn't it
wonderful? And more—he had conscience; he
had a sense of right and wrong, such as it was; he
was able to feel remorse. It looks impossible, it
looks incredible, but it is not. I believe that some
day it will be found out that peasants are people.
Yes, beings in a great many respects like ourselves.
And I believe that some day they will find this out,

---

too—and then! Well, then I think they will rise
up and demand to be regarded as part of the race,
and that by consequence there will be trouble.
Whenever one sees in a book or in a king's proclama-
tion those words "the nation," they bring before us
the upper classes; only those; we know no other
"nation"; for us and the kings no other "nation"
exists. But from the day that I saw old D'Arc
the peasant acting and feeling just as I should have
acted and felt myself, I have carried the con-
viction in my heart that our peasants are not merely
animals, beasts of burden put here by the good God
to produce food and comfort for the "nation," but
something more and better. You look incredulous.
Well, that is your training; it is the training of
everybody; but as for me, I thank that incident
for giving me a better light, and I have never
forgotten it.

Let me see—where was I? One's mind wanders
around here and there and yonder, when one is
old. I think I said Joan comforted him. Certainly,
that is what she would do—there was no need to say
that. She coaxed him and petted him and caressed
him, and laid the memory of that old hard speech of
his to rest. Laid it to rest until she should be dead.
Then he would remember it again—yes, yes!
Lord, how those things sting, and burn, and gnaw
—the things which we did against the innocent
dead! And we say in our anguish, "If they could
only come back!" Which is all very well to say,

---

but, as far as I can see, it doesn't profit anything.
In my opinion the best way is not to do the thing in
the first place. And I am not alone in this; I have
heard our two knights say the same thing; and a
man there in Orleans—no, I believe it was at
Beaugency, or one of those places—it seems more
as if it was at Beaugency than the others—this man
said the same thing exactly; almost the same words;
a dark man with a cast in his eye and one leg
shorter than the other. His name was—was—it is
singular that I can't call that man's name; I had it
in my mind only a moment ago, and I know it be-
gins with—no, I don't remember what it begins
with; but never mind, let it go; I will think of it
presently, and then I will tell you.

Well, pretty soon the old father wanted to know
how Joan felt when she was in the thick of a battle,
with the bright blades hacking and flashing all around
her, and the blows rapping and slatting on her shield,
and blood gushing on her from the cloven ghastly face
and broken teeth of the neighbor at her elbow, and
the perilous sudden back surge of massed horses
upon a person when the front ranks give way before
a heavy rush of the enemy, and men tumble limp
and groaning out of saddles all around, and battle-
flags falling from dead hands wipe across one's face
and hide the tossing turmoil a moment, and in the
reeling and swaying and laboring jumble one's horse's
hoofs sink into soft substances and shrieks of pain
respond, and presently—panic! rush! swarm!

---

flight! and death and hell following after! And
the old fellow got ever so much excited; and strode
up and down, his tongue going like a mill, asking
question after question and never waiting for an
answer; and finally he stood Joan up in the middle
of the room and stepped off and scanned her crit-
cally, and said:

"No—I don't understand it. You are so little.
So little and slender. When you had your armor
on, to-day, it gave one a sort of notion of it; but in
these pretty silks and velvets, you are only a dainty
page, not a league-striding war-colossus, moving in
clouds and darkness and breathing smoke and
thunder. I would God I might see you at it and
go tell your mother! That would help her sleep,
poor thing! Here—teach me the arts of the soldier,
that I may explain them to her."

And she did it. She gave him a pike, and put him
through the manual of arms; and made him do the
steps, too. His marching was incredibly awkward
and slovenly, and so was his drill with the pike; but
he didn't know it, and was wonderfully pleased with
himself, and mightily excited and charmed with the
ringing, crisp words of command. I am obliged to
say that if looking proud and happy when one is
marching were sufficient, he would have been the
perfect soldier.

And he wanted a lesson in sword-play, and got it.
But of course that was beyond him; he was too
old. It was beautiful to see Joan handle the foils,

---

but the old man was a bad failure. He was afraid
of the things, and skipped and dodged and scrambled
around like a woman who has lost her mind on
account of the arrival of a bat. He was of no good
as an exhibition. But if La Hire had only come in,
that would have been another matter. Those two
fenced often; I saw them many times. True, Joan
was easily his master, but it made a good show for
all that, for La Hire was a grand swordsman. What
a swift creature Joan was! You would see her stand-
ing erect with her ankle-bones together and her foil
arched over her head, the hilt in one hand and the
button in the other—the old general opposite, bent
forward, left hand reposing on his back, his foil
advanced, slightly wiggling and squirming, his watch-
ing eye boring straight into hers—and all of a sud-
den she would give a spring forward, and back
again; and there she was, with the foil arched over
her head as before. La Hire had been hit, but all
that the spectator saw of it was a something like a
thin flash of light in the air, but nothing distinct,
nothing definite.

We kept the drinkables moving, for that would
please the Bailly and the landlord; and old Laxart
and D'Arc got to feeling quite comfortable, but
without being what you could call tipsy. They got
out the presents which they had been buying to carry
home—humble things and cheap, but they would
be fine there, and welcome. And they gave to Joan
a present from Père Fronte and one from her mother

---

—the one a little leaden image of the Holy Virgin,
the other half a yard of blue silk ribbon; and she
was as pleased as a child; and touched, too, as one
could see plainly enough. Yes, she kissed those
poor things over and over again, as if they had been
something costly and wonderful; and she pinned the
Virgin on her doublet, and sent for her helmet and
tied the ribbon on that; first one way, then another;
then a new way, then another new way; and with
each effort perching the helmet on her hand and
holding it off this way and that, and canting her head
to one side and then the other, examining the
effect, as a bird does when it has got a new bug.
And she said she could almost wish she was going to
the wars again; for then she would fight with the
better courage, as having always with her something
which her mother's touch had blessed.

Old Laxart said he hoped she would go to the
wars again, but home first, for that all the people
there were cruel anxious to see her—and so he
went on:

"They are proud of you, dear. Yes, prouder
than any village ever was of anybody before. And
indeed it is right and rational; for it is the first time
a village has ever had anybody like you to be proud
of and call its own. And it is strange and beautiful
how they try to give your name to every creature
that has a sex that is convenient. It is but half a
year since you began to be spoken of and left us,
and so it is surprising to see how many babies there

---

are already in that region that are named for you.
First it was just Joan; then it was Joan-Orleans;
then Joan-Orleans-Beaugency-Patay; and now the
next ones will have a lot of towns and the Corona-
tion added, of course. Yes, and the animals the
same. They know how you love animals, and so
they try to do you honor and show their love for
you by naming all those creatures after you; inso-
much that if a body should step out and call 'Joan
of Arc—come!' there would be a landslide of cats
and all such things, each supposing it was the one
wanted, and all willing to take the benefit of the
doubt, anyway, for the sake of the food that might
be on delivery. The kitten you left behind—the
last estray you fetched home—bears your name,
now, and belongs to Père Fronte, and is the pet and
pride of the village; and people have come miles to
look at it and pet it and stare at it and wonder over
it because it was Joan of Arc's cat. Everybody will
tell you that; and one day when a stranger threw a
stone at it, not knowing it was your cat, the village
rose against him as one man and hanged him! And
but for Père Fronte—"

There was an interruption. It was a messenger
from the King, bearing a note for Joan, which I read
to her, saying he had reflected, and had consulted
his other generals, and was obliged to ask her to re-
main at the head of the army and withdraw her
resignation. Also, would she come immediately and
attend a council of war? Straightway, at a little

---

distance, military commands and the rumble of
drums broke on the still night, and we knew that her
guard was approaching.

Deep disappointment clouded her face for just one
moment and no more—it passed, and with it the
homesick girl, and she was Joan of Arc, Com-
mander-in-Chief again, and ready for duty.

---

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

In my double quality of page and secretary I fol-
lowed Joan to the council. She entered that pres-
ence with the bearing of a grieved goddess. What
was become of the volatile child that so lately
was enchanted with a ribbon and suffocated with
laughter over the distresses of a foolish peasant who
had stormed a funeral on the back of a bee-stung
bull? One may not guess. Simply it was gone,
and had left no sign. She moved straight to the
council-table, and stood. Her glance swept from
face to face there, and where it fell, these it lit as
with a torch, those it scorched as with a brand. She
knew where to strike. She indicated the generals
with a nod, and said:

"My business is not with you. You have not
craved a council of war." Then she turned toward
the King's privy council, and continued: "No; it
is with you. A council of war! It is amazing.
There is but one thing to do, and only one, and
lo, ye call a council of war! Councils of war have
no value but to decide between two or several doubt-
ful courses. But a council of war when there is only

---

one course? Conceive of a man in a boat and his
family in the water, and he goes out among his
friends to ask what he would better do? A council
of war, name of God! To determine what?"

She stopped, and turned till her eyes rested
upon the face of La Tremouille; and so she stood,
silent, measuring him, the excitement in all faces
burning steadily higher and higher, and all pulses
beating faster and faster; then she said, with de-
liberation:

"Every sane man—whose loyalty to his King is
not a show and a pretence—knows that there is but
one rational thing before us—the march upon
Paris!"

Down came the fist of La Hire with an approving
crash upon the table. La Tremouille turned white
with anger, but he pulled himself firmly together and
held his peace. The King's lazy blood was stirred
and his eye kindled finely, for the spirit of war was
away down in him somewhere, and a frank, bold
speech always found it and made it tingle gladsomely.
Joan waited to see if the chief minister might wish
to defend his position; but he was experienced and
wise, and not a man to waste his forces where the cur-
rent was against him. He would wait; the King's
private ear would be at his disposal by and by.

That pious fox the Chancellor of France took the
word now. He washed his soft hands together,
smiling persuasively, and said to Joan:

"Would it be courteous, your Excellency, to

---

move abruptly from here without waiting for an
answer from the Duke of Burgundy? You may not
know that we are negotiating with his Highness,
and that there is likely to be a fortnight's truce be-
tween us; and on his part a pledge to deliver Paris
into our hands without cost of a blow or the fatigue
of a march thither."

Joan turned to him and said, gravely:

"This is not a confessional, my lord. You were
not obliged to expose that shame here."

The Chancellor's face reddened, and he retorted:

"Shame? What is there shameful about it?"

Joan answered in level, passionless tones:

"One may describe it without hunting far for
words. I knew of this poor comedy, my lord,
although it was not intended that I should know. It
is to the credit of the devisers of it that they tried to
conceal it—this comedy whose text and impulse
are describable in two words."

The Chancellor spoke up with a fine irony in his
manner:

"Indeed? And will your Excellency be good
enough to utter them?"

"Cowardice and treachery!"

The fists of all the generals came down this time,
and again the King's eye sparkled with pleasure.
The Chancellor sprang to his feet and appealed to
his Majesty:

"Sire, I claim your protection."

But the King waved him to his seat again, saying:

---

"Peace. She had a right to be consulted before
that thing was undertaken, since it concerned war as
well as politics. It is but just that she be heard
upon it now."

The Chancellor sat down trembling with indigna-
tion, and remarked to Joan:

"Out of charity I will consider that you did not
know who devised this measure which you condemn
in so candid language."

"Save your charity for another occasion, my
lord," said Joan, as calmly as before. "Whenever
anything is done to injure the interests and degrade
the honor of France, all but the dead know how to
name the two conspirators-in-chief—"

"Sire, sire! this insinuation—"

"It is not an insinuation, my lord," said Joan,
placidly, "it is a charge. I bring it against the
King's chief minister and his Chancellor."

Both men were on their feet now, insisting that
the King modify Joan's frankness; but he was not
minded to do it. His ordinary councils were stale
water—his spirit was drinking wine, now, and the
taste of it was good. He said:

"Sit—and be patient. What is fair for one must
in fairness be allowed the other. Consider—and be
just. When have you two spared her? What dark
charges and harsh names have you withheld when
you spoke of her?" Then he added, with a veiled
twinkle in his eye, "If these are offenses I see no
particular difference between them, except that she

---

says her hard things to your faces, whereas you say
yours behind her back."

He was pleased with that neat shot and the way it
shriveled those two people up, and made La Hire
laugh out loud and the other generals softly quake
and chuckle. Joan tranquilly resumed:

"From the first, we have been hindered by this
policy of shilly-shally; this fashion of counseling
and counseling and counseling where no counseling
is needed, but only fighting. We took Orleans on
the 8th of May, and could have cleared the region
round about in three days and saved the slaughter of
Patay. We could have been in Rheims six weeks
ago, and in Paris now; and would see the last Eng-
lishman pass out of France in half a year. But we
struck no blow after Orleans, but went off into the
country—what for? Ostensibly to hold councils;
really to give Bedford time to send reinforcements to
Talbot—which he did; and Patay had to be fought.
After Patay, more counseling, more waste of precious
time. Oh, my King, I would that you would be
persuaded!" She began to warm up, now. "Once
more we have our opportunity. If we rise and
strike, all is well. Bid me march upon Paris. In
twenty days it shall be yours, and in six months all
France! Here is half a year's work before us; if
this chance be wasted, I give you twenty years to
do it in. Speak the word, O gentle King—speak
but the one—"

"I cry you mercy!" interrupted the Chancellor,

---

who saw a dangerous enthusiasm rising in the King's
face. "March upon Paris? Does your Excellency
forget that the way bristles with English strong-
holds?"

"That for your English strongholds!" and Joan
snapped her fingers scornfully. "Whence have we
marched in these last days? From Gien. And
whither? To Rheims. What bristled between?
English strongholds. What are they now? French
ones—and they never cost a blow!" Here ap-
plause broke out from the group of generals, and
Joan had to pause a moment to let it subside.
"Yes, English strongholds bristled before us; now
French ones bristle behind us. What is the argu-
ment? A child can read it. The strongholds be-
tween us and Paris are garrisoned by no new breed
of English, but by the same breed as those others—
with the same fears, the same questionings, the same
weaknesses, the same disposition to see the heavy
hand of God descending upon them. We have but
to march!—on the instant—and they are ours,
Paris is ours, France is ours! Give the word, O
my King, command your servant to—"

"Stay!" cried the Chancellor. "It would be
madness to put this affront upon his Highness the
Duke of Burgundy. By the treaty which we have
every hope to make with him—"

"Oh, the treaty which we hope to make with him!
He has scorned you for years, and defied you. Is
it your subtle persuasions that have softened his

---

manners and beguiled him to listen to proposals?
No; it was blows!—the blows which we gave him!
That is the only teaching that that sturdy rebel can
understand. What does he care for wind? The
treaty which we hope to make with him—alack!
He deliver Paris! There is no pauper in the land
that is less able to do it. He deliver Paris! Ah,
but that would make great Bedford smile! Oh, the
pitiful pretext! the blind can see that this thin pour-
parler with its fifteen-day truce has no purpose but
to give Bedford time to hurry forward his forces
against us. More treachery—always treachery!
We call a council of war—with nothing to council
about; but Bedford calls no council to teach him
what our one course is. He knows what he would
do in our place. He would hang his traitors and
march upon Paris! O gentle King, rouse! The
way is open, Paris beckons, France implores.
Speak and we—"

"Sire, it is madness, sheer madness! Your Ex-
cellency, we cannot, we must not go back from what
we have done; we have proposed to treat, we must
treat with the Duke of Burgundy."

"And we will? said Joan.

"Ah? How?"

"At the point of the lance!"

The house rose, to a man—all that had French
hearts—and let go a crash of applause—and kept
it up; and in the midst of it one heard La Hire
growl out: "At the point of the lance! By God,

---

that is the music!" The King was up, too, and drew
his sword, and took it by the blade and strode to
Joan and delivered the hilt of it into her hand,
saying:

"There, the King surrenders. Carry it to Paris."

And so the applause burst out again, and the
historical council of war that has bred so many
legends was over.

---

CHAPTER XXXIX.

It was away past midnight, and had been a tre-
mendous day in the matter of excitement and
fatigue, but that was no matter to Joan when there
was business on hand. She did not think of bed.
The generals followed her to her official quarters,
and she delivered her orders to them as fast as she
could talk, and they sent them off to their different
commands as fast as delivered; wherefore the mes-
sengers galloping hither and thither raised a world of
clatter and racket in the still streets; and soon were
added to this the music of distant bugles and the roll
of drums—notes of preparation; for the vanguard
would break camp at dawn.

The generals were soon dismissed, but I wasn't;
nor Joan; for it was my turn to work, now. Joan
walked the floor and dictated a summons to the
Duke of Burgundy to lay down his arms and make
peace and exchange pardons with the King; or, if
he must fight, go fight the Saracens. "Pardonnez-
vous l'un à l'autre de bon cœur, entièrement, ainsi
que doivent faire loyaux chrétiens, et, s'il vous plait
de guerroyer, allez contre les Sarrasins." It was

---

long, but it was good, and had the sterling ring to it.
It is my opinion that it was as fine and simple and
straightforward and eloquent a state paper as she
ever uttered.

It was delivered into the hands of a courier, and
he galloped away with it. Then Joan dismissed me,
and told me to go to the inn and stay, and in the
morning give to her father the parcel which she had
left there. It contained presents for the Domremy
relatives and friends and a peasant dress which she
had bought for herself. She said she would say
good-bye to her father and uncle in the morning if it
should still be their purpose to go, instead of tarry-
ing awhile to see the city.

I didn't say anything, of course: but I could have
said that wild horses couldn't keep those men in that
town half a day. They waste the glory of being the
first to carry the great news to Domremy—the taxes
remitted forever!—and hear the bells clang and clat-
ter, and the people cheer and shout? Oh, not they.
Patay and Orleans and the Coronation were events
which in a vague way these men understood to be
colossal; but they were colossal mists, films, abstrac-
tions: this was a gigantic reality!

When I got there, do you suppose they were abed!
Quite the reverse. They and the rest were as mel-
low as mellow could be; and the Paladin was doing
his battles over in great style, and the old peasants
were endangering the building with their applause.
He was doing Patay now; and was bending his big

---

frame forward and laying out the positions and
movements with a rake here and a rake there of his
formidable sword on the floor, and the peasants were
stooped over with their hands on their spread knees
observing with excited eyes and ripping out ejacula-
tions of wonder and admiration all along:

"Yes, here we were, waiting—waiting for the
word; our horses fidgeting and snorting and danc-
ing to get away, we lying back on the bridles till our
bodies fairly slanted to the rear; the word rang out
at last—'Go!' and we went!

"Went? There was nothing like it ever seen!
Where we swept by squads of scampering English,
the mere wind of our passage laid them flat in piles
and rows! Then we plunged into the ruck of
Fastolfe's frantic battle-corps and tore through it like
a hurricane, leaving a causeway of the dead stretch-
ing far behind; no tarrying, no slacking rein, but
on! on! on! far yonder in the distance lay our
prey—Talbot and his host looming vast and dark
like a storm-cloud brooding on the sea! Down we
swooped upon them, glooming all the air with a
quivering pall of dead leaves flung up by the whirl-
wind of our flight. In another moment we should
have struck them as world strikes world when disor-
bited constellations crash into the Milky Way, but by
misfortune and the inscrutable dispensation of God I
was recognized! Talbot turned white, and shouting,
'Save yourselves, it is the Standard-Bearer of Joan
of Arc!' drove his spurs home till they met in the

---

middle of his horse's entrails, and fled the field with
his billowing multitudes at his back! I could have
cursed myself for not putting on a disguise. I saw
reproach in the eyes of her Excellency, and was bit-
terly ashamed. I had caused what seemed an irre-
parable disaster. Another might have gone aside to
grieve, as not seeing any way to mend it; but I
thank God I am not of those. Great occasions
only summon as with a trumpet-call the slumbering
reserves of my intellect. I saw my opportunity in
an instant—in the next I was away! Through the
woods I vanished—fst!—like an extinguished
light! Away around through the curtaining forest I
sped, as if on wings, none knowing what was become
of me, none suspecting my design. Minute after
minute passed, on and on I flew; on, and still on;
and at last with a great cheer I flung my Banner to
the breeze and burst out in front of Talbot! Oh, it
was a mighty thought! That weltering chaos of dis-
tracted men whirled and surged backward like a tidal
wave which has struck a continent, and the day was
ours! Poor helpless creatures, they were in a trap;
they were surrounded; they could not escape to the
rear, for there was our army; they could not escape
to the front, for there was I. Their hearts shriveled
in their bodies, their hands fell listless at their sides.
They stood still, and at our leisure we slaughtered
them to a man; all except Talbot and Fastolfe,
whom I saved and brought away, one under each
arm."

---

Well, there is no denying it, the Paladin was in
great form that night. Such style! such noble
grace of gesture, such grandeur of attitude, such
energy when he got going! such steady rise, on
such sure wing, such nicely graduated expenditures
of voice according to weight of matter, such skillfully
calculated approaches to his surprises and explosions,
such belief-compelling sincerity of tone and manner,
such a climaxing peal from his brazen lungs, and
such a lightning-vivid picture of his mailed form
and flaunting banner when he burst out before that
despairing army! And oh, the gentle art of the last
half of his last sentence—delivered in the careless
and indolent tone of one who has finished his real
story, and only adds a colorless and inconsequential
detail because it has happened to occur to him in a
lazy way.

It was a marvel to see those innocent peasants.
Why, they went all to pieces with enthusiasm, and
roared out applauses fit to raise the roof and wake
the dead. When they had cooled down at last and
there was silence but for the heaving and panting,
old Laxart said, admiringly:

"As it seems to me, you are an army in your
single person."

"Yes, that is what he is," said Noël Rainguesson,
convincingly. "He is a terror; and not just in this
vicinity. His mere name carries a shudder with it to
distant lands—just his mere name; and when he
frowns, the shadow of it falls as far as Rome, and

---

the chickens go to roost an hour before schedule
time. Yes; and some say—"

"Noël Rainguesson, you are preparing yourself
for trouble. I will say just one word to you, and it
will be to your advantage to—"

I saw that the usual thing had got a start. No
man could prophesy when it would end. So I de-
livered Joan's message and went off to bed.

Joan made her good-byes to those old fellows in
the morning, with loving embraces and many tears,
and with a packed multitude for sympathizers, and
they rode proudly away on their precious horses to
carry their great news home. I had seen better
riders, I will say that; for horsemanship was a new
art to them.

The vanguard moved out at dawn and took the road,
with bands braying and banners flying; the second
division followed at eight. Then came the Bur-
gundian ambassadors, and lost us the rest of that day
and the whole of the next. But Joan was on hand,
and so they had their journey for their pains. The
rest of us took the road at dawn, next morning, July
20th. And got how far? Six leagues. Tremouille
was getting in his sly work with the vacillating King,
you see. The King stopped at St. Marcoul and
prayed three days. Precious time lost—for us;
precious time gained for Bedford. He would know
how to use it.

We could not go on without the King; that would
be to leave him in the conspirators' camp. Joan

---

argued, reasoned, implored; and at last we got
under way again.

Joan's prediction was verified. It was not a
campaign, it was only another holiday excursion.
English strongholds lined our route; they surren-
dered without a blow; we garrisoned them with
Frenchmen and passed on. Bedford was on the
march against us with his new army by this time, and
on the 25th of July the hostile forces faced each
other and made preparation for battle; but Bedford's
good judgment prevailed, and he turned and retreated
toward Paris. Now was our chance. Our men
were in great spirits.

Will you believe it? Our poor stick of a King al-
lowed his worthless advisers to persuade him to start
back for Gien, whence he had set out when we first
marched for Rheims and the Coronation! And we
actually did start back. The fifteen-day truce had
just been concluded with the Duke of Burgundy,
and we would go and tarry at Gien until he should
deliver Paris to us without a fight.

We marched to Bray; then the King changed his
mind once more, and with it his face toward Paris.
Joan dictated a letter to the citizens of Rheims to
encourage them to keep heart in spite of the truce,
and promising to stand by them. She furnished
them the news herself that the King had made this
truce; and in speaking of it she was her usual frank
self. She said she was not satisfied with it, and
didn't know whether she would keep it or not; that

---

if she kept it, it would be solely out of tenderness
for the King's honor. All French children know
those famous words. How naïve they are! "De
cette trève qui a été faite, je ne suis pas contente, et
je ne sais si je la tiendrai. Si je la tiens, ce sera
seulement pour garder l'honneur du roi." But in
any case, she said, she would not allow the blood
royal to be abused, and would keep the army in
good order and ready for work at the end of the
truce.

Poor child, to have to fight England, Burgundy,
and a French conspiracy all at the same time—it
was too bad. She was a match for the others, but a
conspiracy—ah, nobody is a match for that, when
the victim that is to be injured is weak and willing.
It grieved her, these troubled days, to be so hindered
and delayed and baffled, and at times she was sad
and the tears lay near the surface. Once, talking
with her good old faithful friend and servant, the
Bastard of Orleans, she said:

"Ah, if it might but please God to let me put off
this steel raiment and go back to my father and my
mother, and tend my sheep again with my sister and
my brothers, who would be so glad to see me!"

By the 12th of August we were camped near
Dampmartin. Later we had a brush with Bedford's
rear-guard, and had hopes of a big battle on the
morrow, but Bedford and all his force got away in
the night and went on toward Paris.

Charles sent heralds and received the submission

---

of Beauvais. The Bishop Pierre Cauchon, that
faithful friend and slave of the English, was not able
to prevent it, though he did his best. He was
obscure then, but his name was to travel round the
globe presently, and live forever in the curses of
France! Bear with me now, while I spit in fancy
upon his grave.

Compiègne surrendered, and hauled down the
English flag. On the 14th we camped two leagues
from Senlis. Bedford turned and approached, and
took up a strong position. We went against him,
but all our efforts to beguile him out from his
entrenchments failed, though he had promised us a
duel in the open field. Night shut down. Let him
look out for the morning! But in the morning he
was gone again.

We entered Compiègne the 18th of August, turn-
ing out the English garrison and hoisting our own flag.

On the 23d Joan gave command to move upon
Paris. The King and the clique were not satisfied
with this, and retired sulking to Senlis, which had
just surrendered. Within a few days many strong
places submitted—Creil, Pont-Saint-Maxence,
Choisy, Gournay-sur-Aronde, Remy, La Neufville-
en-Hez, Moguay, Chantilly, Saintines. The English
power was tumbling, crash after crash! And still
the King sulked and disapproved, and was afraid of
our movement against the capital.

On the 26th of August, 1429, Joan camped at
Saint Denis; in effect, under the walls of Paris.

---

And still the King hung back and was afraid. If
we could but have had him there to back us with his
authority! Bedford had lost heart and decided to
waive resistance and go and concentrate his strength
in the best and loyalest province remaining to him
—Normandy. Ah, if we could only have persuaded
the King to come and countenance us with his pres-
ence and approval at this supreme moment!

---

CHAPTER XL.

Courier after courier was despatched to the
King, and he promised to come, but didn't.
The Duke d'Alençon went to him and got his promise
again, which he broke again. Nine days were lost
thus; then he came, arriving at St. Denis September
7th.

Meantime the enemy had begun to take heart: the
spiritless conduct of the King could have no other
result. Preparations had now been made to de-
fend the city. Joan's chances had been diminished,
but she and her generals considered them plenty
good enough yet. Joan ordered the attack for eight
o'clock next morning, and at that hour it began.

Joan placed her artillery and began to pound a
strong work which protected the gate St. Honoré.
When it was sufficiently crippled the assault was
sounded at noon, and it was carried by storm. Then
we moved forward to storm the gate itself, and hurled
ourselves against it again and again, Joan in the lead
with her standard at her side, the smoke enveloping
us in choking clouds, and the missiles flying over us
and through us as thick as hail.

In the midst of our last assault, which would have

---

carried the gate sure and given us Paris and in effect
France, Joan was struck down by a crossbow bolt,
and our men fell back instantly and almost in a panic
—for what were they without her? She was the
army, herself.

Although disabled, she refused to retire, and
begged that a new assault be made, saying it must
win; and adding, with the battle-light rising in her
eyes, "I will take Paris now or die!" She had to
be carried away by force, and this was done by
Gaucourt and the Duke d'Alençon.

But her spirits were at the very top notch, now.
She was brimming with enthusiasm. She said she
would be carried before the gate in the morning, and
in half an hour Paris would be ours without any ques-
tion. She could have kept her word. About this
there was no doubt. But she forgot one factor—
the King, shadow of that substance named La Tre-
mouille. The King forbade the attempt!

You see, a new Embassy had just come from the
Duke of Burgundy, and another sham private trade
of some sort was on foot.

You would know, without my telling you, that
Joan's heart was nearly broken. Because of the pain
of her wound and the pain at her heart she slept little
that night. Several times the watchers heard muffled
sobs from the dark room where she lay at St. Denis,
and many times the grieving words "It could have
been taken!—it could have been taken!" which
were the only ones she said.

---

She dragged herself out of bed a day later with a
new hope. D'Alençon had thrown a bridge across
the Seine near St. Denis. Might she not cross by
that and assault Paris at another point? But the
King got wind of it and broke the bridge down!
And more—he declared the campaign ended! And
more still—he had made a new truce and a long
one, in which he had agreed to leave Paris unthreat-
ened and unmolested, and go back to the Loire
whence he had come!

Joan of Arc, who had never been defeated by the
enemy, was defeated by her own King. She had
said once that all she feared for her cause was
treachery. It had struck its first blow now. She
hung up her white armor in the royal basilica of St.
Denis, and went and asked the King to relieve her
of her functions and let her go home. As usual,
she was wise. Grand combinations, far-reaching
great military moves were at an end, now; for the
future, when the truce should end, the war would be
merely a war of random and idle skirmishes, appar-
ently; work suitable for subalterns, and not requiring
the supervision of a sublime military genius. But
the King would not let her go. The truce did not
embrace all France; there were French strongholds
to be watched and preserved; he would need her.
Really you see, Tremouille wanted to keep her
where he could balk and hinder her.

Now came her Voices again. They said, "Re-
main at St. Denis." There was no explanation.

---

They did not say why. That was the voice of God;
it took precedence of the command of the King;
Joan resolved to stay. But that filled La Tremouille
with dread. She was too tremendous a force to be
left to herself; she would surely defeat all his plans.
He beguiled the King to use compulsion. Joan had
to submit—because she was wounded and helpless.
In the Great Trial she said she was carried away
against her will; and that if she had not been
wounded it could not have been accomplished. Ah,
she had a spirit, that slender girl! a spirit to brave
all earthly powers and defy them. We shall never
know why the Voices ordered her to stay. We only
know this: that if she could have obeyed, the history
of France would not be as it now stands written in
the books. Yes, well we know that.

On the 13th of September the army, sad and
spiritless, turned its face toward the Loire, and
marched—without music! Yes, one noted that
detail. It was a funeral march; that is what it was.
A long, dreary funeral march, with never a shout
or a cheer; friends looking on in tears, all the way,
enemies laughing. We reached Gien at last—that
place whence we had set out on our splendid march
toward Rheims less than three months before, with
flags flying, bands playing, the victory-flush of Patay
glowing in our faces, and the massed multitudes
shouting and praising and giving us God-speed.
There was a dull rain falling now, the day was
dark, the heavens mourned, the spectators were few,

---

we had no welcome but the welcome of silence, and
pity, and tears.

Then the King disbanded that noble army of
heroes; it furled its flags, it stored its arms: the dis-
grace of France was complete. La Tremouille wore
the victor's crown; Joan of Arc, the unconquerable,
was conquered.

---

CHAPTER XLI.

Yes, it was as I have said: Joan had Paris and
France in her grip, and the Hundred Years'
War under her heel, and the King made her open
her fist and take away her foot.

Now followed about eight months of drifting
about with the King and his council, and his gay
and showy and dancing and flirting and hawking
and frolicking and serenading and dissipating court
—drifting from town to town and from castle to
castle—a life which was pleasant to us of the per-
sonal staff, but not to Joan. However, she only
saw it, she didn't live it. The King did his sin-
cerest best to make her happy, and showed a most
kind and constant anxiety in this matter. All others
had to go loaded with the chains of an exacting
court etiquette, but she was free, she was privileged.
So that she paid her duty to the King once a day
and passed the pleasant word, nothing further was
required of her. Naturally, then, she made herself
a hermit, and grieved the weary days through in her
own apartments, with her thoughts and devotions
for company, and the planning of now forever un-

---

realizable military combinations for entertainment.
In fancy she moved bodies of men from this and
that and the other point, so calculating the dis-
tances to be covered, the time required for each
body, and the nature of the country to be traversed,
as to have them appear in sight of each other on a
given day or at a given hour and concentrate for
battle. It was her only game, her only relief from
her burden of sorrow and inaction. She played it
hour after hour, as others play chess; and lost her-
self in it, and so got repose for her mind and heal-
ing for her heart.

She never complained, of course. It was not her
way. She was the sort that endure in silence.
But—she was a caged eagle just the same, and
pined for the free air and the alpine heights and the
fierce joys of the storm.

France was full of rovers—disbanded soldiers
ready for anything that might turn up. Several
times, at intervals, when Joan's dull captivity grew
too heavy to bear, she was allowed to gather a troop
of cavalry and make a health-restoring dash against
the enemy. These things were like a bath to her
spirits.

It was like old times, there at Saint-Pierre-le-
Moutier, to see her lead assault after assault, be
driven back again and again, but always rally and
charge anew, all in a blaze of eagerness and delight;
till at last the tempest of missiles rained so intoler-
ably thick that old D'Aulon, who was wounded,

---

sounded the retreat (for the King had charged him
on his head to let no harm come to Joan); and
away everybody rushed after him—as he supposed;
but when he turned and looked, there were we of
the staff still hammering away; wherefore he rode
back and urged her to come, saying she was mad to
stay there with only a dozen men. Her eye danced
merrily, and she turned upon him crying out:

"A dozen men! name of God, I have fifty thou-
sand, and will never budge till this place is taken!
Sound the charge!"

Which he did, and over the walls we went, and
the fortress was ours. Old D'Aulon thought her
mind was wandering; but all she meant was, that
she felt the might of fifty thousand men surging in
her heart. It was a fanciful expression; but, to my
thinking, truer word was never said.

Then there was the affair near Lagny, where we
charged the intrenched Burgundians through the
open field four times, the last time victoriously; the
best prize of it Franquet d'Arras, the freebooter and
pitiless scourge of the region roundabout.

Now and then other such affairs; and at last,
away toward the end of May, 1430, we were in the
neighborhood of Compiègne, and Joan resolved to
go to the help of that place, which was being be-
sieged by the Duke of Burgundy.

I had been wounded lately, and was not able to
ride without help; but the good Dwarf took me on
behind him, and I held on to him and was safe

---

enough. We started at midnight, in a sullen down-
pour of warm rain, and went slowly and softly and
in dead silence, for we had to slip through the
enemy's lines. We were challenged only once; we
made no answer, but held our breath and crept
steadily and stealthily along, and got through with-
out any accident. About three or half past we
reached Compiègne, just as the gray dawn was
breaking in the East.

Joan set to work at once, and concerted a plan
with Guillaume de Flavy, captain of the city—a
plan for a sortie toward evening against the enemy,
who was posted in three bodies on the other side of
the Oise, in the level plain. From our side one of
the city gates communicated with a bridge. The
end of this bridge was defended on the other side of
the river by one of those fortresses called a boule-
vard; and this boulevard also commanded a raised
road, which stretched from its front across the plain
to the village of Marguy. A force of Burgundians
occupied Marguy; another was camped at Clairoix,
a couple of miles above the raised road; and a body
of English was holding Venette, a mile and a half
below it. A kind of bow-and-arrow arrangement,
you see: the causeway the arrow, the boulevard at
the feather-end of it, Marguy at the barb, Venette
at one end of the bow, Clairoix at the other.

Joan's plan was to go straight per causeway
against Marguy, carry it by assault, then turn swiftly
upon Clairoix, up to the right, and capture that

---

camp in the same way, then face to the rear and be
ready for heavy work, for the Duke of Burgundy
lay behind Clairoix with a reserve. Flavy's lieu-
tenant, with archers and the artillery of the boule-
vard, was to keep the English troops from coming
up from below and seizing the causeway and cutting
off Joan's retreat in case she should have to make
one. Also, a fleet of covered boats was to be
stationed near the boulevard as an additional help
in case a retreat should become necessary.

It was the 24th of May. At four in the afternoon
Joan moved out at the head of six hundred cavalry
—on her last march in this life!

It breaks my heart. I had got myself helped up
on to the walls, and from there I saw much that
happened, the rest was told me long afterward by
our two knights and other eye-witnesses. Joan
crossed the bridge, and soon left the boulevard be-
hind her and went skimming away over the raised
road with her horsemen clattering at her heels. She
had on a brilliant silver-gilt cape over her armor,
and I could see it flap and flare and rise and fall like
a little patch of white flame.

It was a bright day, and one could see far and
wide over that plain. Soon we saw the English
force advancing, swiftly and in handsome order, the
sunlight flashing from its arms.

Joan crashed into the Burgundians at Marguy and
was repulsed. Then she saw the other Burgundians
moving down from Clairoix. Joan rallied her men

---

and charged again, and was again rolled back. Two
assaults occupy a good deal of time—and time was
precious here. The English were approaching the
road now from Venette, but the boulevard opened
fire on them and they were checked. Joan heart-
ened her men with inspiring words and led them to
the charge again in great style. This time she car-
ried Marguy with a hurrah. Then she turned at
once to the right and plunged into the plain and
struck the Clairoix force, which was just arriving;
then there was heavy work, and plenty of it, the
two armies hurling each other backward turn about
and about, and victory inclining first to the one,
then to the other. Now all of a sudden there was a
panic on our side. Some say one thing caused it,
some another. Some say the cannonade made our
front ranks think retreat was being cut off by the
English, some say the rear ranks got the idea that
Joan was killed. Anyway our men broke, and went
flying in a wild rout for the causeway. Joan tried
to rally them and face them around, crying to them
that victory was sure, but it did no good, they
divided and swept by her like a wave. Old D'Aulon
begged her to retreat while there was yet a chance
for safety, but she refused; so he seized her horse's
bridle and bore her along with the wreck and ruin in
spite of herself. And so along the causeway they
came swarming, that wild confusion of frenzied men
and horses—and the artillery had to stop firing, of
course; consequently the English and Burgundians

---

closed in in safety, the former in front, the latter
behind their prey. Clear to the boulevard the
French were washed in this enveloping inundation;
and there, cornered in an angle formed by the flank
of the boulevard and the slope of the causeway,
they bravely fought a hopeless fight, and sank down
one by one.

Flavy, watching from the city wall, ordered the
gate to be closed and the drawbridge raised. This
shut Joan out.

The little personal guard around her thinned
swiftly. Both of our good knights went down dis-
abled; Joan's two brothers fell wounded; then Noël
Rainguesson—all wounded while loyally sheltering
Joan from blows aimed at her. When only the
Dwarf and the Paladin were left, they would not
give up, but stood their ground stoutly, a pair of
steel towers streaked and splashed with blood; and
where the axe of the one fell, and the sword of the
other, an enemy gasped and died. And so fighting,
and loyal to their duty to the last, good simple
souls, they came to their honorable end. Peace to
their memories! they were very dear to me.

Then there was a cheer and a rush, and Joan, still
defiant, still laying about her with her sword, was
seized by her cape and dragged from her horse.
She was borne away a prisoner to the Duke of
Burgundy's camp, and after her followed the victori-
ous army roaring its joy.

The awful news started instantly on its round;

---

from lip to lip it flew; and wherever it came it
struck the people as with a sort of paralysis; and
they murmured over and over again, as if they were
talking to themselves, or in their sleep, "The Maid
of Orleans taken!……Joan of Arc a prisoner!
……the Saviour of France lost to us!"—and
would keep saying that over, as if they couldn't
understand how it could be, or how God could per-
mit it, poor creatures!

You know what a city is like when it is hung from
eaves to pavement with rustling black? Then you
know what Tours was like, and some other cities.
But can any man tell you what the mourning in the
hearts of the peasantry of France was like? No,
nobody can tell you that, and, poor dumb things,
they could not have told you themselves, but it was
there—indeed, yes. Why, it was the spirit of a
whole nation hung with crape!

The 24th of May. We will draw down the curtain
now upon the most strange, and pathetic, and won-
derful military drama that has been played upon the
stage of the world. Joan of Arc will march no
more.

---

---

TRIAL AND MARTYRDOM

---

---

CHAPTER I.

I cannot bear to dwell at great length upon the
shameful history of the summer and winter fol-
lowing the capture. For a while I was not much
troubled, for I was expecting every day to hear that
Joan had been put to ransom, and that the King—
no, not the King, but grateful France—had come
eagerly forward to pay it. By the laws of war she
could not be denied the privilege of ransom. She
was not a rebel; she was a legitimately constituted
soldier, head of the armies of France by her King's
appointment, and guilty of no crime known to mili-
tary law; therefore she could not be detained upon
any pretext, if ransom were proffered.

But day after day dragged by and no ransom was
offered! It seems incredible, but it is true. Was
that reptile Tremouille busy at the King's ear? All
we know is, that the King was silent, and made no
offer and no effort in behalf of this poor girl who
had done so much for him.

But, unhappily, there was alacrity enough in an-
other quarter. The news of the capture reached
Paris the day after it happened, and the glad Eng-

---

lish and Burgundians deafened the world all the day
and all the night with the clamor of their joy-bells
and the thankful thunder of their artillery, and the
next day the Vicar-General of the Inquisition sent
a message to the Duke of Burgundy requiring the
delivery of the prisoner into the hands of the Church
to be tried as an idolater.

The English had seen their opportunity, and it
was the English power that was really acting, not
the Church. The Church was being used as a blind,
a disguise; and for a forcible reason: the Church
was not only able to take the life of Joan of Arc,
but to blight her influence and the valor-breeding
inspiration of her name, whereas the English power
could but kill her body; that would not diminish or
destroy the influence of her name; it would magnify
it and make it permanent. Joan of Arc was the
only power in France that the English did not de-
spise, the only power in France that they considered
formidable. If the Church could be brought to take
her life, or to proclaim her an idolater, a heretic, a
witch, sent from Satan, not from heaven, it was be-
lieved that the English supremacy could be at once
reinstated.

The Duke of Burgundy listened—but waited.
He could not doubt that the French King or the
French people would come forward presently and
pay a higher price than the English. He kept Joan
a close prisoner in a strong fortress, and continued
to wait, week after week. He was a French prince,

---

and was at heart ashamed to sell her to the English.
Yet with all his waiting no offer came to him from
the French side.

One day Joan played a cunning trick on her jailer,
and not only slipped out of her prison, but locked
him up in it. But as she fled away she was seen by
a sentinel, and was caught and brought back.

Then she was sent to Beaurevoir, a stronger castle.
This was early in August, and she had been in cap-
tivity more than two months now. Here she was
shut up in the top of a tower which was sixty feet
high. She ate her heart there for another long
stretch—about three months and a half. And she
was aware, all these weary five months of captivity,
that the English, under cover of the Church, were
dickering for her as one would dicker for a horse or
a slave, and that France was silent, the King silent,
all her friends the same. Yes, it was pitiful.

And yet when she heard at last that Compiègne
was being closely besieged and likely to be cap-
tured, and that the enemy had declared that no
inhabitant of it should escape massacre, not even
children of seven years of age, she was in a fever at
once to fly to our rescue. So she tore her bed
clothes to strips and tied them together and de-
scended this frail rope in the night, and it broke, and
she fell and was badly bruised, and remained three
days insensible, meantime neither eating nor drink-
ing.

And now came relief to us, led by the Count of

---

Vendôme, and Compiègne was saved and the siege
raised. This was a disaster to the Duke of Bur-
gundy. He had to have money now. It was a
good time for a new bid to be made for Joan of
Arc. The English at once sent a French Bishop—
that forever infamous Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais.
He was partly promised the Archbishopric of
Rouen, which was vacant, if he should succeed.
He claimed the right to preside over Joan's ecclesi-
astical trial because the battle-ground where she was
taken was within his diocese.

By the military usage of the time the ransom of a
royal prince was 10,000 livres of gold, which is
61,125 francs—a fixed sum, you see. It must be
accepted when offered; it could not be refused.

Cauchon brought the offer of this very sum from
the English—a royal prince's ransom for the poor
little peasant girl of Domremy. It shows in a
striking way the English idea of her formidable im-
portance. It was accepted. For that sum Joan of
Arc, the Saviour of France, was sold; sold to her
enemies; to the enemies of her country; enemies
who had lashed and thrashed and thumped and
trounced France for a century and made holiday
sport of it; enemies who had forgotten, years and
years ago, what a Frenchman's face was like, so
used were they to seeing nothing but his back;
enemies whom she had whipped, whom she had
cowed, whom she had taught to respect French
valor, new-born in her nation by the breath of her

---

spirit; enemies who hungered for her life as being
the only puissance able to stand between English
triumph and French degradation. Sold to a French
priest by a French prince, with the French King
and the French nation standing thankless by and
saying nothing.

And she—what did she say? Nothing. Not a
reproach passed her lips. She was too great for
that—she was Joan of Arc; and when that is said,
all is said.

As a soldier, her record was spotless. She could
not be called to account for anything under that
head. A subterfuge must be found, and, as we
have seen, was found. She must be tried by priests
for crimes against religion. If none could be dis-
covered, some must be invented. Let the miscreant
Cauchon alone to contrive those.

Rouen was chosen as the scene of the trial. It
was in the heart of the English power; its popula-
tion had been under English dominion so many
generations that they were hardly French now, save
in language. The place was strongly garrisoned.
Joan was taken there near the end of December,
1430, and flung into a dungeon. Yes, and clothed
in chains, that free spirit!

Still France made no move. How do I account
for this? I think there is only one way. You will
remember that whenever Joan was not at the front,
the French held back and ventured nothing; that
whenever she led, they swept everything before

---

them, so long as they could see her white armor or
her banner; that every time she fell wounded or was
reported killed—as at Compiègne—they broke in
panic and fled like sheep. I argue from this that
they had undergone no real transformation as yet;
that at bottom they were still under the spell of a
timorousness born of generations of unsuccess, and
a lack of confidence in each other and in their lead-
ers born of old and bitter experience in the way of
treacheries of all sorts—for their kings had been
treacherous to their great vassals and to their gener-
als, and these in turn were treacherous to the head
of the state and to each other. The soldiery found
that they could depend utterly on Joan, and upon
her alone. With her gone, everything was gone.
She was the sun that melted the frozen torrents and
set them boiling; with that sun removed, they froze
again, and the army and all France became what
they had been before, mere dead corpses—that and
nothing more; incapable of thought, hope, ambi-
tion, or motion.

---

CHAPTER II.

My wound gave me a great deal of trouble clear
into the first part of October; then the fresher
weather renewed my life and strength. All this
time there were reports drifting about that the King
was going to ransom Joan. I believed these, for I
was young and had not yet found out the littleness
and meanness of our poor human race, which brags
about itself so much, and thinks it is better and
higher than the other animals.

In October I was well enough to go out with two
sorties, and in the second one, on the 23d, I was
wounded again. My luck had turned, you see. On
the night of the 25th the besiegers decamped, and
in the disorder and confusion one of their prisoners
escaped and got safe into Compiègne, and hobbled
into my room as pallid and pathetic an object as
you would wish to see.

"What? Alive? Noël Rainguesson!"

It was indeed he. It was a most joyful meeting,
that you will easily know; and also as sad as it was
joyful. We could not speak Joan's name. One's
voice would have broken down. We knew who was

---

meant when she was mentioned; we could say
"she" and "her," but we could not speak the
name.

We talked of the personal staff. Old D'Aulon,
wounded and a prisoner, was still with Joan and
serving her, by permission of the Duke of Burgundy.
Joan was being treated with the respect due to her
rank and to her character as a prisoner of war taken
in honorable conflict. And this was continued—as
we learned later—until she fell into the hands of
that bastard of Satan, Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of
Beauvais.

Noël was full of noble and affectionate praises and
appreciations of our old boastful big Standard-
Bearer, now gone silent forever, his real and imag-
inary battles all fought, his work done, his life
honorably closed and completed.

"And think of his luck!" burst out Noël, with
his eyes full of tears. "Always the pet child of
luck! See how it followed him and stayed by him,
from his first step all through, in the field or out of
it; always a splendid figure in the public eye,
courted and envied everywhere; always having a
chance to do fine things and always doing them; in
the beginning called the Paladin in joke, and called
it afterward in earnest because he magnificently
made the title good; and at last—supremest luck
of all—died in the field! died with his harness on;
died faithful to his charge, the Standard in his hand;
died—oh, think of it—with the approving eye of

---

Joan of Arc upon him! He drained the cup of
glory to the last drop, and went jubilant to his
peace, blessedly spared all part in the disaster which
was to follow. What luck, what luck! And we?
What was our sin that we are still here, we who
have also earned our place with the happy dead?"

And presently he said:

"They tore the sacred Standard from his dead
hand and carried it away, their most precious prize
after its captured owner. But they haven't it now.
A month ago we put our lives upon the risk—our
two good knights, my fellow-prisoners, and I—and
stole it, and got it smuggled by trusty hands to
Orleans, and there it is now, safe for all time in the
Treasury."

I was glad and grateful to learn that. I have
seen it often since, when I have gone to Orleans on
the 8th of May to be the petted old guest of the
city and hold the first place of honor at the ban-
quets and in the processions—I mean since Joan's
brothers passed from this life. It will still be there,
sacredly guarded by French love, a thousand years
from now—yes, as long as any shred of it hangs
together.*

It remained there three hundred and sixty years, and then was de-
stroyed in a public bonfire, together with two swords, a plumed cap,
several suits of state apparel, and other relics of the Maid, by a mob in
the time of the Revolution. Nothing which the hand of Joan of Arc is
known to have touched now remains in existence except a few preciously
guarded military and state papers which she signed, her pen being
guided by a clerk or her secretary Louis de Conte. A bowlder exists
from which she is known to have mounted her horse when she was
once setting out upon a campaign. Up to a quarter of a century ago
there was a single hair from her head still in existence. It was drawn
through the wax of a seal attached to the parchment of a state docu-
ment. It was surreptitiously snipped out, seal and all, by some vandal
relic-hunter, and carried off. Doubtless it still exists, but only the
thief knows where.—Translator.

---

Two or three weeks after this talk came the tre-
mendous news like a thunder-clap, and we were
aghast—Joan of Arc sold to the English!

Not for a moment had we ever dreamed of such a
thing. We were young, you see, and did not know
the human race, as I have said before. We had
been so proud of our country, so sure of her noble-
ness, her magnanimity, her gratitude. We had ex-
pected little of the King, but of France we had
expected everything. Everybody knew that in
various towns patriot priests had been marching in
procession urging the people to sacrifice money,
property, everything, and buy the freedom of their
heaven-sent deliverer. That the money would be
raised we had not thought of doubting.

But it was all over now, all over. It was a bitter
time for us. The heavens seemed hung with black;
all cheer went out from our hearts. Was this com-
rade here at my bedside really Noël Rainguesson,
that light-hearted creature whose whole life was but
one long joke, and who used up more breath in
laughter than in keeping his body alive? No, no;
that Noël I was to see no more. This one's heart
was broken. He moved grieving about, and ab-

---

sently, like one in a dream; the stream of his
laughter was dried at its source.

Well, that was best. It was my own mood. We
were company for each other. He nursed me
patiently through the dull long weeks, and at last,
in January, I was strong enough to go about again.
Then he said:

"Shall we go now?"

"Yes."

There was no need to explain. Our hearts were
in Rouen; we would carry our bodies there. All
that we cared for in this life was shut up in that
fortress. We could not help her, but it would be
some solace to us to be near her, to breathe the air
that she breathed, and look daily upon the stone
walls that hid her. What if we should be made
prisoners there? Well, we could but do our best,
and let luck and fate decide what should happen.

And so we started. We could not realize the
change which had come upon the country. We
seemed able to choose our own route and go
wherever we pleased, unchallenged and unmolested.
When Joan of Arc was in the field, there was a sort
of panic of fear everywhere; but now that she was
out of the way, fear had vanished. Nobody was
troubled about you or afraid of you, nobody was
curious about you or your business, everybody was
indifferent.

We presently saw that we could take to the Seine,
and not weary ourselves out with land travel. So

---

we did it, and were carried in a boat to within a
league of Rouen. Then we got ashore; not on the
hilly side, but on the other, where it is as level as a
floor. Nobody could enter or leave the city with-
out explaining himself. It was because they feared
attempts at a rescue of Joan.

We had no trouble. We stopped in the plain
with a family of peasants and stayed a week, help-
ing them with their work for board and lodging, and
making friends of them. We got clothes like theirs,
and wore them. When we had worked our way
through their reserves and gotten their confidence,
we found that they secretly harbored French hearts
in their bodies. Then we came out frankly and told
them everything, and found them ready to do any-
thing they could to help us. Our plan was soon
made, and was quite simple. It was to help them
drive a flock of sheep to the market of the city.
One morning early we made the venture in a melan-
choly drizzle of rain, and passed through the frown-
ing gates unmolested. Our friends had friends living
over a humble wine-shop in a quaint tall building
situated in one of the narrow lanes that run down
from the cathedral to the river, and with these they
bestowed us; and the next day they smuggled our
own proper clothing and other belongings to us.
The family that lodged us—the Pierrons—were
French in sympathy, and we needed to have no
secrets from them.

---

CHAPTER III.

It was necessary for me to have some way to gain
bread for Noël and myself; and when the Pier-
rons found that I knew how to write, they applied
to their confessor in my behalf, and he got a place
for me with a good priest named Manchon, who
was to be the chief recorder in the Great Trial of
Joan of Arc now approaching. It was a strange
position for me—clerk to the recorder—and
dangerous if my sympathies and late employment
should be found out. But there was not much
danger. Manchon was at bottom friendly to Joan
and would not betray me; and my name would not,
for I had discarded my surname and retained only
my given one, like a person of low degree.

I attended Manchon constantly straight along, out
of January and into February, and was often in the
citadel with him—in the very fortress where Joan
was imprisoned, though not in the dungeon where
she was confined, and so did not see her, of course.

Manchon told me everything that had been hap-
pening before my coming. Ever since the pur-
chase of Joan, Cauchon had been busy packing his

---

jury for the destruction of the Maid—weeks and
weeks he had spent in this bad industry. The
University of Paris had sent him a number of learned
and able and trusty ecclesiastics of the stripe he
wanted; and he had scraped together a clergyman
of like stripe and great fame here and there and
yonder, until he was able to construct a formidable
court numbering half a hundred distinguished names.
French names they were, but their interests and
sympathies were English.

A great officer of the Inquisition was also sent
from Paris, for the accused must be tried by the
forms of the Inquisition; but this was a brave and
righteous man, and he said squarely that this court
had no power to try the case, wherefore he refused
to act; and the same honest talk was uttered by
two or three others.

The Inquisitor was right. The case as here resur-
rected against Joan had already been tried long ago
at Poitiers, and decided in her favor. Yes, and by
a higher tribunal than this one, for at the head of it
was an Archbishop—he of Rheims—Cauchon's
own metropolitan. So here, you see, a lower court
was impudently preparing to re-try and re-decide a
cause which had already been decided by its superior,
a court of higher authority. Imagine it! No, the
case could not properly be tried again. Cauchon
could not properly preside in this new court, for
more than one reason: Rouen was not in his dio-
cese; Joan had not been arrested in her domicile,

---

which was still Domremy; and finally this proposed
judge was the prisoner's outspoken enemy, and
therefore he was incompetent to try her. Yet all
these large difficulties were gotten rid of. The terri-
torial Chapter of Rouen finally granted territorial
letters to Cauchon—though only after a struggle
and under compulsion. Force was also applied to
the Inquisitor, and he was obliged to submit.

So, then, the little English King, by his repre-
sentative, formally delivered Joan into the hands of
the court, but with this reservation: if the court
failed to condemn her, he was to have her back
again!

Ah, dear, what chance was there for that forsaken
and friendless child? Friendless, indeed—it is the
right word. For she was in a black dungeon, with
half a dozen brutal common soldiers keeping guard
night and day in the room where her cage was—
for she was in a cage; an iron cage, and chained to
her bed by neck and hands and feet. Never a per-
son near her whom she had ever seen before; never
a woman at all. Yes, this was, indeed, friendless-
ness.

Now it was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg who
captured Joan at Compiègne, and it was Jean who
sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Yet this very
De Luxembourg was shameless enough to go and
show his face to Joan in her cage. He came with
two English earls, Warwick and Stafford. He was
a poor reptile. He told her he would get her set

---

free if she would promise not to fight the English
any more. She had been in that cage a long time
now, but not long enough to break her spirit. She
retorted scornfully:

"Name of God, you but mock me. I know that
you have neither the power nor the will to do it."

He insisted. Then the pride and dignity of the
soldier rose in Joan, and she lifted her chained
hands and let them fall with a clash, saying:

"See these! They know more than you, and
can prophesy better. I know that the English are
going to kill me, for they think that when I am dead
they can get the Kingdom of France. It is not so.
Though there were a hundred thousand of them
they would never get it."

This defiance infuriated Stafford, and he—now
think of it—he a free, strong man, she a chained
and helpless girl—he drew his dagger and flung
himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized him
and held him back. Warwick was wise. Take her
life in that way? Send her to Heaven stainless and
undisgraced? It would make her the idol of France,
and the whole nation would rise and march to vic-
tory and emancipation under the inspiration of her
spirit. No, she must be saved for another fate than
that.

Well, the time was approaching for the Great
Trial. For more than two months Cauchon had
been raking and scraping everywhere for any odds
and ends of evidence or suspicion or conjecture that

---

might be made usable against Joan, and carefully
suppressing all evidence that came to hand in her
favor. He had limitless ways and means and powers
at his disposal for preparing and strengthening the
case for the prosecution, and he used them all.

But Joan had no one to prepare her case for her,
and she was shut up in those stone walls and had no
friend to appeal to for help. And as for witnesses,
she could not call a single one in her defense; they
were all far away, under the French flag, and this
was an English court; they would have been seized
and hanged if they had shown their faces at the
gates of Rouen. No, the prisoner must be the sole
witness—witness for the prosecution, witness for
the defense; and with a verdict of death resolved
upon before the doors were opened for the court's
first sitting.

When she learned that the court was made up of
ecclesiastics in the interest of the English, she
begged that in fairness an equal number of priests
of the French party should be added to these.
Cauchon scoffed at her message, and would not
even deign to answer it.

By the law of the Church—she being a minor
under twenty-one—it was her right to have counsel
to conduct her case, advise her how to answer when
questioned, and protect her from falling into traps
set by cunning devices of the prosecution. She
probably did not know that this was her right, and
that she could demand it and require it, for there

---

was none to tell her that; but she begged for this
help at any rate. Cauchon refused it. She urged
and implored, pleading her youth and her ignorance
of the complexities and intricacies of the law and of
legal procedure. Cauchon refused again, and said
she must get along with her case as best she might
by herself. Ah, his heart was a stone.

Cauchon prepared the proces verbal. I will sim-
plify that by calling it the Bill of Particulars. It was
a detailed list of the charges against her, and formed
the basis of the trial. Charges? It was a list of
suspicions and public rumors—those were the words
used. It was merely charged that she was suspected
of having been guilty of heresies, witchcraft, and
other such offenses against religion.

Now by law of the Church, a trial of that sort
could not be begun until a searching inquiry had
been made into the history and character of the
accused, and it was essential that the result of this
inquiry be added to the proces verbal and form a
part of it. You remember that that was the first
thing they did before the trial at Poitiers. They did
it again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to Dom-
remy. There and all about the neighborhood he
made an exhaustive search into Joan's history and
character, and came back with his verdict. It was
very clear. The searcher reported that he found
Joan's character to be in every way what he "would
like his own sister's character to be." Just about
the same report that was brought back to Poitiers,

---

you see. Joan's was a character which could en-
dure the minutest examination.

This verdict was a strong point for Joan, you will
say. Yes, it would have been if it could have seen
the light; but Cauchon was awake, and it disap-
peared from the proces verbal before the trial.
People were prudent enough not to inquire what
became of it.

One would imagine that Cauchon was ready to
begin the trial by this time. But no, he devised one
more scheme for poor Joan's destruction, and it
promised to be a deadly one.

One of the great personages picked out and sent
down by the University of Paris was an ecclesiastic
named Nicolas Loyseleur. He was tall, handsome,
grave, of smooth soft speech and courteous and
winning manners. There was no seeming of treach-
cry or hypocrisy about him, yet he was full of both.
He was admitted to Joan's prison by night, disguised
as a cobbler; he pretended to be from her own
country; he professed to be secretly a patriot; he
revealed the fact that he was a priest. She was
filled with gladness to see one from the hills and
plains that were so dear to her; happier still to look
upon a priest and disburden her heart in confession,
for the offices of the Church were the bread of life,
the breath of her nostrils to her, and she had been
long forced to pine for them in vain. She opened
her whole innocent heart to this creature, and in re-
turn he gave her advice concerning her trial which

---

could have destroyed her if her deep native wisdom
had not protected her against following it.

You will ask, what value could this scheme have,
since the secrets of the confessional are sacred and
cannot be revealed? True—but suppose another
person should overhear them? That person is not
bound to keep the secret. Well, that is what
happened. Cauchon had previously caused a hole
to be bored through the wall; and he stood with
his ear to that hole and heard all. It is pitiful
to think of these things. One wonders how they
could treat that poor child so. She had not
done them any harm.

---

CHAPTER IV.

On Tuesday, the 20th of February, while I sat
at my master's work in the evening, he came
in, looking sad, and said it had been decided to
begin the trial at eight o'clock the next morning,
and I must get ready to assist him.

Of course I had been expecting such news every
day for many days; but no matter, the shock of it
almost took my breath away and set me trembling
like a leaf. I suppose that without knowing it I had
been half imagining that at the last moment some-
thing would happen, something that would stop this
fatal trial: maybe that La Hire would burst in at
the gates with his hellions at his back; maybe that
God would have pity and stretch forth His mighty
hand. But now—now there was no hope.

The trial was to begin in the chapel of the fortress
and would be public. So I went sorrowing away
and told Noël, so that he might be there early and
secure a place. It would give him a chance to look
again upon the face which we so revered and which
was so precious to us. All the way, both going and
coming, I plowed through chattering and rejoicing

---

multitudes of English soldiery and English-hearted
French citizens. There was no talk but of the
coming event. Many times I heard the remark,
accompanied by a pitiless laugh:

"The fat Bishop has got things as he wants them
at last, and says he will lead the vile witch a merry
dance and a short one."

But here and there I glimpsed compassion and
distress in a face, and it was not always a French
one. English soldiers feared Joan, but they admired
her for her great deeds and her unconquerable
spirit.

In the morning Manchon and I went early, yet as
we approached the vast fortress we found crowds of
men already there and still others gathering. The
chapel was already full and the way barred against
further admissions of unofficial persons. We took
our appointed places. Throned on high sat the
president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in his
grand robes, and before him in rows sat his robed
court—fifty distinguished ecclesiastics, men of high
degree in the Church, of clear-cut intellectual faces,
men of deep learning, veteran adepts in strategy and
casuistry, practiced setters of traps for ignorant
minds and unwary feet. When I looked around
upon this army of masters of legal fence, gathered
here to find just one verdict and no other, and re-
membered that Joan must fight for her good name
and her life single-handed against them, I asked
myself what chance an ignorant poor country girl

---

of nineteen could have in such an unequal conflict;
and my heart sank down low, very low. When I
looked again at that obese president, puffing and
wheezing there, his great belly distending and re-
ceding with each breath, and noted his three chins,
fold above fold, and his knobby and knotty face,
and his purple and splotchy complexion, and his
repulsive cauliflower nose, and his cold and malig-
nant eyes—a brute, every detail of him—my heart
sank lower still. And when I noted that all were
afraid of this man, and shrank and fidgeted in their
seats when his eye smote theirs, my last poor ray of
hope dissolved away and wholly disappeared.

There was one unoccupied seat in this place, and
only one. It was over against the wall, in view of
every one. It was a little wooden bench without a
back, and it stood apart and solitary on a sort of
dais. Tall men-at-arms in morion, breastplate,
and steel gauntlets stood as stiff as their own hal-
berds on each side of this dais, but no other creature
was near by it. A pathetic little bench to me it was,
for I knew whom it was for; and the sight of it
carried my mind back to the great court at Poitiers,
where Joan sat upon one like it and calmly fought
her cunning fight with the astonished doctors of the
Church and Parliament, and rose from it victorious
and applauded by all, and went forth to fill the
world with the glory of her name.

What a dainty little figure she was, and how gentle
and innocent, how winning and beautiful in the fresh

---

bloom of her seventeen years! Those were grand
days. And so recent—for she was but just nine-
teen now—and how much she had seen since, and
what wonders she had accomplished!

But now—oh, all was changed now. She had
been languishing in dungeons, away from light and
air and the cheer of friendly faces, for nearly three-
quarters of a year—she, born child of the sun,
natural comrade of the birds and of all happy free
creatures. She would be weary now, and worn with
this long captivity, her forces impaired; despondent,
perhaps, as knowing there was no hope. Yes, all
was changed.

All this time there had been a muffled hum of
conversation, and rustling of robes and scraping of
feet on the floor, a combination of dull noises which
filled all the place. Suddenly:

"Produce the accused!"

It made me catch my breath. My heart began to
thump like a hammer. But there was silence now—
silence absolute. All those noises ceased, and it
was as if they had never been. Not a sound; the
stillness grew oppressive; it was like a weight upon
one. All faces were turned toward the door; and
one could properly expect that, for most of the
people there suddenly realized, no doubt, that they
were about to see, in actual flesh and blood, what
had been to them before only an embodied prodigy,
a word, a phrase, a world-girdling Name.

The stillness continued. Then, far down the

---

stone-paved corridors, one heard a vague slow sound
approaching: clank……clink……clank—Joan
of Arc, Deliverer of France, in chains!

My head swam; all things whirled and spun about
me. Ah, I was realizing, too.

---

CHAPTER V.

I give you my honor now that I am not going to
distort or discolor the facts of this miserable
trial. No, I will give them to you honestly, detail
by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down
daily in the official record of the court, and just as
one may read them in the printed histories. There
will be only this difference: that in talking familiarly
with you I shall use my right to comment upon the
proceedings and explain them as I go along, so that
you can understand them better; also, I shall throw
in trifles which came under our eyes and have a
certain interest for you and me, but were not im-
portant enough to go into the official record.*

He kept his word. His account of the Great Trial will be found
to be in strict and detailed accordance with the sworn facts of history.—
Translator.

To take up my story now where I left off. We
heard the clanking of Joan's chains down the corri-
dors; she was approaching.

Presently she appeared; a thrill swept the house,
and one heard deep breaths drawn. Two guardsmen
followed her at a short distance to the rear. Her

---

head was bowed a little, and she moved slowly, she
being weak and her irons heavy. She had on men's
attire—all black; a soft woolen stuff, intensely
black, funereally black, not a speck of relieving color
in it from her throat to the floor. A wide collar of
this same black stuff lay in radiating folds upon her
shoulders and breast; the sleeves of her doublet were
full, down to the elbows, and tight thence to her
manacled wrists; below the doublet, tight black
hose down to the chains on her ankles.

Half way to her bench she stopped, just where a
wide shaft of light fell slanting from a window, and
slowly lifted her face. Another thrill!—it was
totally colorless, white as snow; a face of gleaming
snow set in vivid contrast upon that slender statue
of somber unmitigated black. It was smooth and
pure and girlish, beautiful beyond belief, infinitely
sad and sweet. But, dear, dear! when the challenge
of those untamed eyes fell upon that judge, and the
droop vanished from her form and it straightened up
soldierly and noble, my heart leaped for joy; and I
said, all is well, all is well—they have not broken
her, they have not conquered her, she is Joan of
Arc still! Yes, it was plain to me now that there
was one spirit there which this dreaded judge could
not quell nor make afraid.

She moved to her place and mounted the dais and
seated herself upon her bench, gathering her chains
into her lap and nestling her little white hands there.
Then she waited in tranquil dignity, the only person

---

there who seemed unmoved and unexcited. A
bronzed and brawny English soldier, standing at
martial ease in the front rank of the citizen spec-
tators, did now most gallantly and respectfully put
up his great hand and give her the military salute;
and she, smiling friendly, put up hers and returned
it; whereat there was a sympathetic little break of
applause, which the judge sternly silenced.

Now the memorable inquisition called in history
the Great Trial began. Fifty experts against a
novice, and no one to help the novice!

The judge summarized the circumstances of the
case and the public reports and suspicions upon
which it was based; then he required Joan to kneel
and make oath that she would answer with exact
truthfulness to all questions asked her.

Joan's mind was not asleep. It suspected that
dangerous possibilities might lie hidden under this
apparently fair and reasonable demand. She an-
swered with the simplicity which so often spoiled
the enemy's best-laid plans in the trial at Poitiers,
and said:

"No; for I do not know what you are going to
ask me; you might ask of me things which I would
not tell you."

This incensed the Court, and brought out a brisk
flurry of angry exclamations. Joan was not dis-
turbed. Cauchon raised his voice and began to
speak in the midst of this noise, but he was so angry
that he could hardly get his words out. He said.

---

"With the divine assistance of our Lord we re-
quire you to expedite these proceedings for the
welfare of your conscience. Swear, with your hands
upon the Gospels, that you will answer true to the
questions which shall be asked you!" and he
brought down his fat hand with a crash upon his
official table.

Joan said, with composure:

"As concerning my father and mother, and the
faith, and what things I have done since my coming
into France, I will gladly answer; but as regards the
revelations which I have received from God, my
Voices have forbidden me to confide them to any
save my King—"

Here there was another angry outburst of threats
and expletives, and much movement and confusion;
so she had to stop, and wait for the noise to sub-
side; then her waxen face flushed a little and she
straightened up and fixed her eye on the judge, and
finished her sentence in a voice that had the old ring
in it:

"—and I will never reveal these things though
you cut my head off!"

Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of
Frenchmen is like. The judge and half the court
were on their feet in a moment, and all shaking their
fists at the prisoner, and all storming and vituperating
at once, so that you could hardly hear yourself
think. They kept this up several minutes; and
because Joan sat untroubled and indifferent, they

---

grew madder and noisier all the time. Once she
said, with a fleeting trace of the old-time mischief in
her eye and manner:

"Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then I
will answer all of you."

At the end of three whole hours of furious de-
bating over the oath, the situation had not changed
a jot. The Bishop was still requiring an unmodified
oath, Joan was refusing for the twentieth time to
take any except the one which she had herself pro-
posed. There was a physical change apparent, but
it was confined to court and judge; they were
hoarse, droopy, exhausted by their long frenzy, and
had a sort of haggard look in their faces, poor men,
whereas Joan was still placid and reposeful and did
not seem noticeably tired.

The noise quieted down; there was a waiting
pause of some moments' duration. Then the judge
surrendered to the prisoner, and with bitterness in
his voice told her to take the oath after her own
fashion. Joan sunk at once to her knees; and as
she laid her hands upon the Gospels, that big English
soldier set free his mind:

"By God, if she were but English, she were not in
this place another half a second!"

It was the soldier in him responding to the soldier
in her. But what a stinging rebuke it was, what an
arraignment of French character and French royalty!
Would that he could have uttered just that one
phrase in the hearing of Orleans! I know that that

---

THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC

---

---

grateful city, that adoring city, would have risen, to
the last man and the last woman, and marched upon
Rouen. Some speeches—speeches that shame a man
and humble him—burn themselves into the memory
and remain there. That one is burned into mine.

After Joan had made oath, Cauchon asked her
her name, and where she was born, and some ques-
tions about her family; also what her age was. She
answered these. Then he asked her how much edu-
cation she had.

"I have learned from my mother the Pater
Noster, the Ave Maria, and the Belief. All that I
know was taught me by my mother."

Questions of this unessential sort dribbled on for
a considerable time. Everybody was tired out by
now, except Joan. The tribunal prepared to rise.
At this point Cauchon forbade Joan to try to escape
from prison, upon pain of being held guilty of the
crime of heresy—singular logic! She answered
simply:

"I am not bound by this prohibition. If I could
escape I would not reproach myself, for I have
given no promise, and I shall not."

Then she complained of the burden of her chains,
and asked that they might be removed, for she was
strongly guarded in that dungeon and there was no
need of them. But the Bishop refused, and re-
minded her that she had broken out of prison twice
before. Joan of Arc was too proud to insist. She
only said, as she rose to go with the guard:

---

"It is true I have wanted to escape, and I do
want to escape." Then she added, in a way that
would touch the pity of anybody, I think, "It is
the right of every prisoner."

And so she went from the place in the midst of
an impressive stillness, which made the sharper and
more distressful to me the clank of those pathetic
chains.

What presence of mind she had! One could
never surprise her out of it. She saw Noël and me
there when she first took her seat on her bench, and
we flushed to the forehead with excitement and
emotion, but her face showed nothing, betrayed
nothing. Her eyes sought us fifty times that day,
but they passed on and there was never any ray of
recognition in them. Another would have started
upon seeing us, and then—why then there could
have been trouble for us, of course.

We walked slowly home together, each busy with
his own grief and saying not a word.

---

CHAPTER VI.

That night Manchon told me that all through
the day's proceedings Cauchon had had some
clerks concealed in the embrasure of a window who
were to make a special report garbling Joan's
answers and twisting them from their right meaning.
Ah, that was surely the cruelest man and the most
shameless that has lived in this world. But his
scheme failed. Those clerks had human hearts in
them, and their base work revolted them, and they
turned to and boldly made a straight report, where-
upon Cauchon cursed them and ordered them out of
his presence with a threat of drowning, which was his
favorite and most frequent menace. The matter
had gotten abroad and was making great and un-
pleasant talk, and Cauchon would not try to repeat
this shabby game right away. It comforted me to
hear that.

When we arrived at the citadel next morning, we
found that a change had been made. The chapel
had been found too small. The court had now re-
moved to a noble chamber situated at the end of the
great hall of the castle. The number of judges was

---

increased to sixty-two—one ignorant girl against
such odds, and none to help her.

The prisoner was brought in. She was as white
as ever, but she was looking no whit worse than she
looked when she had first appeared the day before.
Isn't it a strange thing? Yesterday she had sat five
hours on that backless bench with her chains in her
lap, baited, badgered, persecuted by that unholy
crew, without even the refreshment of a cup of
water—for she was never offered anything, and if I
have made you know her by this time you will know
without my telling you that she was not a person
likely to ask favors of those people. And she had
spent the night caged in her wintry dungeon with
her chains upon her; yet here she was, as I say,
collected, unworn, and ready for the conflict; yes,
and the only person there who showed no signs of
the wear and worry of yesterday. And her eyes—
ah, you should have seen them and broken your
hearts. Have you seen that veiled deep glow, that
pathetic hurt dignity, that unsubdued and unsubdu-
able spirit that burns and smoulders in the eye of a
caged eagle and makes you feel mean and shabby
under the burden of its mute reproach? Her eyes
were like that. How capable they were, and how
wonderful! Yes, at all times and in all circumstances
they could express as by print every shade of the
wide range of her moods. In them were hidden
floods of gay sunshine, the softest and peacefulest
twilights, and devastating storms and lightnings.

---

Not in this world have there been others that were
comparable to them. Such is my opinion, and
none that had the privilege to see them would say
otherwise than this which I have said concerning
them.

The seance began. And how did it begin, should
you think? Exactly as it began before—with that
same tedious thing which had been settled once,
after so much wrangling. The Bishop opened
thus:

"You are required, now, to take the oath pure
and simple, to answer truly all questions asked you."

Joan replied placidly:

"I have made oath yesterday, my lord; let that
suffice."

The Bishop insisted and insisted, with rising
temper; Joan but shook her head and remained
silent. At last she said:

"I made oath yesterday; it is sufficient." Then
she sighed and said, "Of a truth, you do burden me
too much."

The Bishop still insisted, still commanded, but he
could not move her. At last he gave it up and
turned her over for the day's inquest to an old hand
at tricks and traps and deceptive plausibilities—
Beaupere, a doctor of theology. Now notice the
form of this sleek strategist's first remark—flung
out in an easy, off-hand way that would have thrown
any unwatchful person off his guard:

"Now, Joan, the matter is very simple; just

---

speak up and frankly and truly answer the questions
which I am going to ask you, as you have sworn to
do."

It was a failure. Joan was not asleep. She saw
the artifice. She said:

"No. You could ask me things which I could
not tell you—and would not." Then, reflecting
upon how profane and out of character it was for
these ministers of God to be prying into matters
which had proceeded from His hands under the
awful seal of His secrecy, she added, with a warning
note in her tone, "If you were well informed con-
cerning me you would wish me out of your hands.
I have done nothing but by revelation."

Beaupere changed his attack, and began an ap-
proach from another quarter. He would slip upon
her, you see, under cover of innocent and unim-
portant questions.

"Did you learn any trade at home?"

"Yes, to sew and to spin." Then the invincible
soldier, victor of Patay, conqueror of the lion Tal-
bot, deliverer of Orleans, restorer of a king's crown,
commander-in-chief of a nation's armies, straight-
ened herself proudly up, gave her head a little toss,
and said with naïve complacency, "And when it
comes to that, I am not afraid to be matched against
any woman in Rouen!"

The crowd of spectators broke out with applause
—which pleased Joan—and there was many a
friendly and petting smile to be seen. But Cauchon

---

stormed at the people and warned them to keep still
and mind their manners.

Beaupere asked other questions. Then:

"Had you other occupations at home?"

"Yes. I helped my mother in the household
work and went to the pastures with the sheep and
the cattle."

Her voice trembled a little, but one could hardly
notice it. As for me, it brought those old enchanted
days flooding back to me, and I could not see what
I was writing for a little while.

Beaupere cautiously edged along up with other
questions toward the forbidden ground, and finally
repeated a question which she had refused to answer
a little while back—as to whether she had received
the Eucharist in those days at other festivals than
that of Easter. Joan merely said:

"Passez outre." Or, as one might say, "Pass
on to matters which you are privileged to pry into."

I heard a member of the court say to a neighbor:

"As a rule, witnesses are but dull creatures, and
an easy prey—yes, and easily embarrassed, easily
frightened—but truly one can neither scare this
child nor find her dozing."

Presently the house pricked up its ears and began
to listen eagerly, for Beaupere began to touch upon
Joan's Voices, a matter of consuming interest and
curiosity to everybody. His purpose was, to trick
her into heedless sayings that could indicate that the
Voices had sometimes given her evil advice—hence

---

that they had come from Satan, you see. To have
dealings with the devil—well, that would send her
to the stake in brief order, and that was the deliber-
ate end and aim of this trial.

"When did you first hear these Voices?"

"I was thirteen when I first heard a Voice coming
from God to help me to live well. I was frightened.
It came at mid-day, in my father's garden in the
summer."

"Had you been fasting?"

"Yes."

"The day before?"

"No."

"From what direction did it come?"

"From the right—from toward the church."

"Did it come with a bright light?"

"Oh, indeed yes. It was brilliant. When I
came into France I often heard the Voices very
loud."

"What did the Voice sound like?"

"It was a noble Voice, and I thought it was sent
to me from God. The third time I heard it I recog-
nized it as being an angel's."

"You could understand it?"

"Quite easily. It was always clear."

"What advice did it give you as to the salvation
of your soul?"

"It told me to live rightly, and be regular in
attendance upon the services of the Church. And
it told me that I must go to France."

---

"In what species of form did the Voice appear?"

Joan looked suspiciously at the priest a moment,
then said, tranquilly:

"As to that, I will not tell you."

"Did the Voice seek you often?"

"Yes. Twice or three times a week, saying,
'Leave your village and go to France.'"

"Did your father know about your departure?"

"No. The Voice said, 'Go to France'; there-
fore I could not abide at home any longer."

"What else did it say?"

"That I should raise the siege of Orleans."

"Was that all?"

"No, I was to go to Vaucouleurs, and Robert de
Baudricourt would give me soldiers to go with me to
France; and I answered, saying that I was a poor
girl who did not know how to ride, neither how to
fight."

Then she told how she was balked and inter-
rupted at Vaucouleurs, but finally got her soldiers,
and began her march.

"How were you dressed?"

The court of Poitiers had distinctly decided and
decreed that as God had appointed her to do a
man's work, it was meet and no scandal to religion
that she should dress as a man; but no matter, this
court was ready to use any and all weapons against
Joan, even broken and discredited ones, and much
was going to be made of this one before this trial
should end.

---

"I wore a man's dress, also a sword which Robert
de Baudricourt gave me, but no other weapon."

"Who was it that advised you to wear the dress
of a man?"

Joan was suspicious again. She would not answer.

The question was repeated.

She refused again.

"Answer. It is a command!"

"Passez outre," was all she said.

So Beaupere gave up the matter for the present.

"What did Baudricourt say to you when you
left?"

"He made them that were to go with me promise
to take charge of me, and to me he said, 'Go, and
let happen what may!'" (Advienne que pourra!)

After a good deal of questioning upon other
matters she was asked again about her attire. She
said it was necessary for her to dress as a man.

"Did your Voice advise it?"

Joan merely answered placidly:

"I believe my Voice gave me good advice."

It was all that could be got out of her, so the
questions wandered to other matters, and finally to
her first meeting with the King at Chinon. She said
she chose out the King, who was unknown to her,
by the revelation of her Voices. All that happened
at that time was gone over. Finally:

"Do you still hear those Voices?"

"They come to me every day."

"What do you ask of them?"

---

"I have never asked of them any recompense but
the salvation of my soul."

"Did the Voice always urge you to follow the
army?"

He is creeping upon her again. She answered:

"It required me to remain behind at St. Denis.
I would have obeyed if I had been free, but I was
helpless by my wound, and the knights carried me
away by force."

"When were you wounded?"

"I was wounded in the moat before Paris, in the
assault."

The next question reveals what Beaupere had been
leading up to:

"Was it a feast day?"

You see? The suggestion is that a voice coming
from God would hardly advise or permit the viola-
tion, by war and bloodshed, of a sacred day.

Joan was troubled a moment, then she answered
yes, it was a feast day.

"Now, then, tell me this: did you hold it right
to make the attack on such a day?"

This was a shot which might make the first breach
in a wall which had suffered no damage thus far.
There was immediate silence in the court and intense
expectancy noticeable all about. But Joan disap-
pointed the house. She merely made a slight little
motion with her hand, as when one brushes away a
fly, and said with reposeful indifference:

"Passez outre."

---

Smiles danced for a moment in some of the stern-
est faces there, and several even laughed outright.
The trap had been long and laboriously prepared; it
fell, and was empty.

The court rose. It had sat for hours, and was
cruelly fatigued. Most of the time had been
taken up with apparently idle and purposeless in-
quiries about the Chinon events, the exiled Duke of
Orleans, Joan's first proclamation, and so on, but
all this seemingly random stuff had really been sown
thick with hidden traps. But Joan had fortunately
escaped them all, some by the protecting luck which
attends upon ignorance and innocence, some by
happy accident, the others by force of her best and
surest helper, the clear vision and lightning intuitions
of her extraordinary mind.

Now, then, this daily baiting and badgering of
this friendless girl, a captive in chains, was to con-
tinue a long, long time—dignified sport, a kennel
of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a kitten!—
and I may as well tell you, upon sworn testimony,
what it was like from the first day to the last. When
poor Joan had been in her grave a quarter of a
century, the Pope called together that great court
which was to re-examine her history, and whose just
verdict cleared her illustrious name from every spot
and stain, and laid upon the verdict and conduct of
our Rouen tribunal the blight of its everlasting exe-
crations. Manchon and several of the judges who
had been members of our court were among the

---

witnesses who appeared before that Tribunal of
Rehabilitation. Recalling these miserable proceed-
ings which I have been telling you about, Manchon
testified thus:—here you have it, all in fair print in
the official history:
When Joan spoke of her apparitions she was interrupted at almost
every word. They wearied her with long and multiplied interrogatories
upon all sorts of things. Almost every day the interrogatories of the
morning lasted three or four hours; then from these morning-inter-
rogatories they extracted the particularly difficult and subtle points, and
these served as material for the afternoon-interrogatories, which lasted
two or three hours. Moment by moment they skipped from one subject
to another; yet in spite of this she always responded with an astonish-
ing wisdom and memory. She often corrected the judges, saying,
"But I have already answered that once before—ask the recorder,"
referring them to me.

And here is the testimony of one of Joan's
judges. Remember, these witnesses are not talking
about two or three days, they are talking about a
tedious long procession of days:
They asked her profound questions, but she extricated herself quite
well. Sometimes the questioners changed suddenly and passed to
another subject to see if she would not contradict herself. They bur-
dened her with long interrogatories of two or three hours, from which
the judges themselves went forth fatigued. From the snares with which
she was beset the expertest man in the world could not have extricated
himself but with difficulty. She gave her responses with great pru-
dence; indeed to such a degree that during three weeks I believed
she was inspired.

Ah, had she a mind such as I have described?
You see what these priests say under oath—picked
men, men chosen for their places in that terrible
court on account of their learning, their experience,

---

their keen and practiced intellects, and their strong
bias against the prisoner. They make that poor
young country girl out the match, and more than
the match, of the sixty-two trained adepts. Isn't it
so? They from the University of Paris, she from
the sheepfold and the cow-stable! Ah, yes, she
was great, she was wonderful. It took six thousand
years to produce her; her like will not be seen in
the earth again in fifty thousand. Such is my
opinion.

---

CHAPTER VII.

The third meeting of the court was in that same
spacious chamber, next day, 24th of February.

How did it begin work? In just the same old
way. When the preparations were ended, the robed
sixty-two massed in their chairs and the guards and
order-keepers distributed to their stations, Cauchon
spoke from his throne and commanded Joan to lay
her hands upon the Gospels and swear to tell the
truth concerning everything asked her!

Joan's eyes kindled, and she rose; rose and stood,
fine and noble, and faced toward the Bishop and
said:

"Take care what you do, my Lord, you who are
my judge, for you take a terrible responsibility on
yourself and you presume too far."

It made a great stir, and Cauchon burst out upon
her with an awful threat—the threat of instant con-
demnation unless she obeyed. That made the very
bones in my body turn cold, and I saw cheeks about
me blanch—for it meant fire and the stake! But
Joan, still standing, answered him back, proud and
undismayed:

---

"Not all the clergy in Paris and Rouen could con-
demn me, lacking the right!"

This made a great tumult, and part of it was ap-
plause from the spectators. Joan resumed her seat.
The Bishop still insisted. Joan said:

"I have already made oath. It is enough."

The Bishop shouted:

"In refusing to swear, you place yourself under
suspicion!"

"Let be. I have sworn already. It is enough."

The Bishop continued to insist. Joan answered
that "she would tell what she knew—but not all
that she knew."

The Bishop plagued her straight along, till at last
she said, in a weary tone:

"I came from God; I have nothing more to do
here. Return me to God, from whom I came."

It was piteous to hear; it was the same as saying,
"You only want my life; take it and let me be at
peace."

The Bishop stormed out again:

"Once more I command you to—"

Joan cut in with a nonchalant "Passez outré," and
Cauchon retired from the struggle; but he retired
with some credit this time, for he offered a compro-
mise, and Joan, always clear-headed, saw protection
for herself in it and promptly and willingly accepted
it. She was to swear to tell the truth "as touching
the matters set down in the proces verbal." They
could not sail her outside of definite limits, now;

---

her course was over a charted sea, henceforth. The
Bishop had granted more than he had intended, and
more than he would honestly try to abide by.

By command, Beaupere resumed his examination
of the accused. It being Lent, there might be a
chance to catch her neglecting some detail of her
religious duties. I could have told him he would
fail there. Why, religion was her life!

"Since when have you eaten or drunk?"

If the least thing had passed her lips in the nature
of sustenance, neither her youth nor the fact that she
was being half starved in her prison could save her
from dangerous suspicion of contempt for the com-
mandments of the Church.

"I have done neither since yesterday at noon."

The priest shifted to the Voices again.

"When have you heard your Voice?"

"Yesterday and to-day."

"At what time?"

"Yesterday it was in the morning."

"What were you doing then?"

"I was asleep and it woke me."

"By touching your arm?"

"No; without touching me."

"Did you thank it? Did you kneel?"

He had Satan in his mind, you see; and was hop-
ing, perhaps, that by and by it could be shown that
she had rendered homage to the arch enemy of God
and man.

"Yes, I thanked it; and knelt in my bed where I

---

was chained, and joined my hands and begged it to
implore God's help for me so that I might have light
and instruction as touching the answers I should give
here."

"Then what did the Voice say?"

"It told me to answer boldly, and God would help
me." Then she turned toward Cauchon and said,
"You say that you are my judge; now I tell
you again, take care what you do, for in truth
I am sent of God and you are putting yourself in
great danger."

Beaupere asked her if the Voice's counsels were
not fickle and variable.

"No. It never contradicts itself. This very day
it has told me again to answer boldly."

"Has it forbidden you to answer only part of
what is asked you?"

"I will tell you nothing as to that. I have
revelations touching the King my master, and those
I will not tell you." Then she was stirred by a
great emotion, and the tears sprang to her eyes and
she spoke out as with strong conviction, saying:

"I believe wholly—as wholly as I believe the
Christian faith and that God has redeemed us from
the fires of hell, that God speaks to me by that
Voice!"

Being questioned further concerning the Voice,
she said she was not at liberty to tell all she knew.

"Do you think God would be displeased at your
telling the whole truth?"

---

"The Voice has commanded me to tell the King
certain things, and not you—and some very lately
—even last night; things which I would he knew.
He would be more easy at his dinner."

"Why doesn't the Voice speak to the King itself,
as it did when you were with him? Would it not if
you asked it?"

"I do not know if it be the wish of God." She
was pensive a moment or two, busy with her
thoughts and far away, no doubt; then she added a
remark in which Beaupere, always watchful, always
alert, detected a possible opening—a chance to set
a trap. Do you think he jumped at it instantly, be-
traying the joy he had in his find, as a young hand at
craft and artifice would do? No, oh, no, you could
not tell that he had noticed the remark at all. He
slid indifferently away from it at once, and began to
ask idle questions about other things, so as to slip
around and spring on it from behind, so to speak:
tedious and empty questions as to whether the Voice
had told her she would escape from this prison; and
if it had furnished answers to be used by her in to-
day's seance; if it was accompanied with a glory of
light; if it had eyes, etc. That risky remark of
Joan's was this:

"Without the Grace of God I could do nothing."

The court saw the priest's game, and watched his
play with a cruel eagerness. Poor Joan was grown
dreamy and absent; possibly she was tired. Her
life was in imminent danger, and she did not suspect

---

it. The time was ripe now, and Beaupere quietly
and stealthily sprung his trap:

"Are you in a state of Grace?"

Ah, we had two or three honorable brave men in
that pack of judges; and Jean Lefevre was one of
them. He sprang to his feet and cried out:

"It is a terrible question! The accused is not
obliged to answer it!"

Cauchon's face flushed black with anger to see
this plank flung to the perishing child, and he
shouted:

"Silence! and take your seat. The accused will
answer the question!"

There was no hope, no way out of the dilemma;
for whether she said yes or whether she said no, it
would be all the same—a disastrous answer, for
the Scriptures had said one cannot know this thing.
Think what hard hearts they were to set this fatal
snare for that ignorant young girl and be proud of
such work and happy in it. It was a miserable
moment for me while we waited; it seemed a year.
All the house showed excitement; and mainly it
was glad excitement. Joan looked out upon these
hungering faces with innocent, untroubled eyes, and
then humbly and gently she brought out that im-
mortal answer which brushed the formidable snare
away as it had been but a cobweb:

"If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God
place me in it; if I be in it, I pray God keep me so."

Ah, you will never see an effect like that; no, not

---

while you live. For a space there was the silence of
the grave. Men looked wondering into each other's
faces, and some were awed and crossed themselves;
and I heard Lefevre mutter:

"It was beyond the wisdom of man to devise that
answer. Whence come this child's amazing inspira-
tions?"

Beaupere presently took up his work again, but
the humiliation of his defeat weighed upon him, and
he made but a rambling and dreary business of it, he
not being able to put any heart in it.

He asked Joan a thousand questions about her
childhood and about the oak wood, and the fairies,
and the children's games and romps under our dear
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont, and this stirring up of old
memories broke her voice and made her cry a little,
but she bore up as well as she could, and answered
everything.

Then the priest finished by touching again upon
the matter of her apparel—a matter which was
never to be lost sight of in this still-hunt for this in-
nocent creature's life, but kept always hanging over
her, a menace charged with mournful possibilities:

"Would you like a woman's dress?"

"Indeed yes, if I may go out from this prison—
but here, no."

---

CHAPTER VIII.

The court met next on Monday the 27th. Would
you believe it? The Bishop ignored the con-
tract limiting the examination to matters set down in
the proces verbal and again commanded Joan to take
the oath without reservations. She said:

"You should be content I have sworn enough."

She stood her ground, and Cauchon had to yield.

The examination was resumed, concerning Joan's
Voices.

"You have said that you recognized them as
being the voices of angels the third time that you
heard them. What angels were they?"

"St. Catherine and St. Marguerite."

"How did you know that it was those two saints?
How could you tell the one from the other?"

"I know it was they; and I know how to
distinguish them."

"By what sign?"

"By their manner of saluting me. I have been
these seven years under their direction, and I
knew who they were because they told me."

"Whose was the first Voice that came to you
when you were thirteen years old?"

---

"It was the Voice of St. Michael. I saw him be-
fore my eyes; and he was not alone, but attended
by a cloud of angels."

"Did you see the archangel and the attendant
angels in the body, or in the spirit?"

"I saw them with the eyes of my body, just as I
see you; and when they went away I cried because
they did not take me with them."

It made me see that awful shadow again that fell
dazzling white upon her that day under l' Arbre Fée
de Bourlemont, and it made me shiver again, though
it was so long ago. It was really not very long gone
by, but it seemed so, because so much had hap-
pened since.

"In what shape and form did St. Michael
appear?"

"As to that, I have not received permission to
speak."

"What did the archangel say to you that first
time?"

"I cannot answer you to-day."

Meaning, I think, that she would have to get per-
mission of her Voices first.

Presently, after some more questions as to the
revelations which had been conveyed through her to
the King, she complained of the unnecessity of all
this, and said:

"I will say again, as I have said before many
times in these sittings, that I answered all questions
of this sort before the court at Poitiers, and I would

---

that you would bring here the record of that court
and read from that. Prithee, send for that book."

There was no answer. It was a subject that had
to be got around and put aside. That book had
wisely been gotten out of the way, for it contained
things which would be very awkward here. Among
them was a decision that Joan's mission was from
God, whereas it was the intention of this inferior
court to show that it was from the devil; also a de-
cision permitting Joan to wear male attire, whereas it
was the purpose of this court to make the male attire
do hurtful work against her.

"How was it that you were moved to come into
France—by your own desire?"

"Yes, and by command of God. But that it was
His will I would not have come. I would sooner
have had my body torn in sunder by horses than
come, lacking that."

Beaupere shifted once more to the matter of the
male attire, now, and proceeded to make a solemn
talk about it. That tried Joan's patience; and pres-
ently she interrupted and said:

"It is a trifling thing and of no consequence.
And I did not put it on by counsel of any man,
but by command of God."

"Robert de Baudricourt did not order you to
wear it?"

"No."

"Do you think you did well in taking the dress of
a man?"

---

"I did well to do whatsoever thing God com-
manded me to do."

"But in this particular case do you think you did
well in taking the dress of a man?"

"I have done nothing but by command of
God."

Beaupere made various attempts to lead her into
contradictions of herself; also to put her words and
acts in disaccord with the Scriptures. But it was
lost time. He did not succeed. He returned to
her visions, the light which shone about them, her
relations with the King, and so on.

"Was there an angel above the King's head the
first time you saw him?"

"By the Blessed Mary!—"

She forced her impatience down, and finished her
sentence with tranquillity: "If there was one I did
not see it."

"Was there light?"

"There were more than three hundred soldiers
there, and five hundred torches, without taking ac-
count of spiritual light."

"What made the King believe in the revelations
which you brought him?"

"He had signs; also the counsel of the clergy."

"What revelations were made to the King?"

"You will not get that out of me this year."

Presently she added: "During three weeks I was
questioned by the clergy at Chinon and Poitiers.
The King had a sign before he would believe; and

---

the clergy were of opinion that my acts were good
and not evil."

The subject was dropped now for a while, and
Beaupere took up the matter of the miraculous sword
of Fierbois to see if he could not find a chance there
to fix the crime of sorcery upon Joan.

"How did you know that there was an ancient
sword buried in the ground under the rear of the
altar of the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois?"

Joan had no concealments to make as to this:

"I knew the sword was there because my Voices
told me so; and I sent to ask that it be given to me
to carry in the wars. It seemed to me that it was
not very deep in the ground. The clergy of the
church caused it to be sought for and dug up; and
they polished it, and the rust fell easily off from it."

"Were you wearing it when you were taken in
battle at Compiègne?"

"No. But I wore it constantly until I left St.
Denis after the attack upon Paris."

This sword, so mysteriously discovered and so
long and so constantly victorious, was suspected of
being under the protection of enchantment.

"Was that sword blest? What blessing had been
invoked upon it?"

"None. I loved it because it was found in the
church of St. Catherine, for I loved that church very
dearly."

She loved it because it had been built in honor of
one of her angels.

---

"Didn't you lay it upon the altar, to the end that
it might be lucky?" (The altar of St. Denis.)

"No."

"Didn't you pray that it might be made lucky?"

"Truly it were no harm to wish that my harness
might be fortunate."

"Then it was not that sword which you wore in
the field of Compiègne? What sword did you
wear there?"

"The sword of the Burgundian Franquet d'Arras,
whom I took prisoner in the engagement at Lagny.
I kept it because it was a good war-sword—good
to lay on stout thumps and blows with."

She said that quite simply; and the contrast be-
tween her delicate little self and the grim soldier-
words which she dropped with such easy familiarity
from her lips made many spectators smile.

"What is become of the other sword? Where is
it now?"

"Is that in the proces verbal?"

Beaupere did not answer.

"Which do you love best, your banner or your
sword?"

Her eye lighted gladly at the mention of her ban-
ner, and she cried out:

"I love my banner best—oh, forty times more
than the sword! Sometimes I carried it myself
when I charged the enemy, to avoid killing any-
one." Then she added, naïvely, and with again
that curious contrast between her girlish little per-

---

sonality and her subject, "I have never killed any-
one."

It made a great many smile; and no wonder, when
you consider what a gentle and innocent little thing
she looked. One could hardly believe she had ever
even seen men slaughtered, she looked so little fitted
for such things.

"In the final assault at Orleans did you tell your
soldiers that the arrows shot by the enemy and the
stones discharged from their catapults and cannon
would not strike any one but you?"

"No. And the proof is, that more than a hun-
dred of my men were struck. I told them to have
no doubts and no fears; that they would raise the
siege. I was wounded in the neck by an arrow in
the assault upon the bastille that commanded the
bridge, but St. Catherine comforted me and I was
cured in fifteen days without having to quit the
saddle and leave my work."

"Did you know that you were going to be
wounded?"

"Yes; and I had told it to the King beforehand.
I had it from my Voices."

"When you took Jargeau, why did you not put
its commandant to ransom?"

"I offered him leave to go out unhurt from the
place, with all his garrison; and if he would not I
would take it by storm."

"And you did, I believe."

"Yes."

---

"Had your Voices counseled you to take it by
storm?"

"As to that, I do not remember."

Thus closed a weary long sitting, without result.
Every device that could be contrived to trap Joan
into wrong thinking, wrong doing, or disloyalty to
the Church, or sinfulness as a little child at home or
later had been tried, and none of them had suc-
ceeded. She had come unscathed through the
ordeal.

Was the court discouraged? No. Naturally it
was very much surprised, very much astonished, to
find its work baffling and difficult instead of simple
and easy, but it had powerful allies in the shape of
hunger, cold, fatigue, persecution, deception, and
treachery; and opposed to this array nothing but a
defenseless and ignorant girl who must some time or
other surrender to bodily and mental exhaustion or
get caught in one of the thousand traps set for her.

And had the court made no progress during these
seemingly resultless sittings? Yes. It had been
feeling its way, groping here, groping there, and had
found one or two vague trails which might freshen
by and by and lead to something. The male attire,
for instance, and the visions and Voices. Of course
no one doubted that she had seen supernatural beings
and been spoken to and advised by them. And of
course no one doubted that by supernatural help
miracles had been done by Joan, such as choosing
out the King in a crowd when she had never seen

---

him before, and her discovery of the sword buried
under the altar. It would have been foolish to
doubt these things, for we all know that the air is
full of devils and angels that are visible to traffickers
in magic on the one hand and to the stainlessly holy
on the other; but what many and perhaps most did
doubt was, that Joan's visions, voices, and miracles
came from God. It was hoped that in time they
could be proven to have been of satanic origin.
Therefore, as you see, the court's persistent fashion
of coming back to that subject every little while and
spooking around it and prying into it was not to
pass the time—it had a strictly business end in
view.

---

CHAPTER IX.

The next sitting opened on Thursday the first of
March. Fifty-eight judges present—the others
resting.

As usual, Joan was required to take an oath with-
out reservations. She showed no temper this time.
She considered herself well buttressed by the proces
verbal compromise which Cauchon was so anxious
to repudiate and creep out of; so she merely re-
fused, distinctly and decidedly; and added, in a
spirit of fairness and candor:

"But as to matters set down in the proces verbal,
I will freely tell the whole truth—yes, as freely and
fully as if I were before the Pope."

Here was a chance! We had two or three Popes,
then; only one of them could be the true Pope, of
course. Everybody judiciously shirked the question
of which was the true Pope and refrained from nam-
ing him, it being clearly dangerous to go into par-
ticulars in this matter. Here was an opportunity to
trick an unadvised girl into bringing herself into
peril, and the unfair judge lost no time in taking ad-
vantage of it. He asked, in a plausibly indolent and
absent way:

---

"Which one do you consider to be the true
Pope?"

The house took an attitude of deep attention, and
so waited to hear the answer and see the prey walk
into the trap. But when the answer came it covered
the judge with confusion, and you could see many
people covertly chuckling. For Joan asked in a
voice and manner which almost deceived even me,
so innocent it seemed:

"Are there two?"

One of the ablest priests in that body and one of
the best swearers there, spoke right out so that half
the house heard him, and said:

"By God, it was a master stroke!"

As soon as the judge was better of his embarrass-
ment he came back to the charge, but was prudent
and passed by Joan's question:

"Is it true that you received a letter from the
Count of Armagnac asking you which of the three
Popes he ought to obey?"

"Yes, and answered it."

Copies of both letters were produced and read.
Joan said that hers had not been quite strictly copied.
She said she had received the Count's letter when
she was just mounting her horse; and added:

"So, in dictating a word or two of reply I said I
would try to answer him from Paris or somewhere
where I could be at rest."

She was asked again which Pope she had con-
sidered the right one.

---

"I was not able to instruct the Count of Armagnac
as to which one he ought to obey;" then she
added, with a frank fearlessness which sounded fresh
and wholesome in that den of trimmers and shufflers,
"but as for me, I hold that we are bound to obey
our Lord the Pope who is at Rome."

The matter was dropped. Then they produced
and read a copy of Joan's first effort at dictating—
her proclamation summoning the English to retire
from the siege of Orleans and vacate France—truly
a great and fine production for an unpracticed girl
of seventeen.

"Do you acknowledge as your own the document
which has just been read?"

"Yes, except that there are errors in it—words
which make me give myself too much importance."
I saw what was coming; I was troubled and
ashamed. "For instance, I did not say 'Deliver up
to the Maid' (rendez à la Pucelle); I said 'Deliver
up to the King' (rendez au Roi); and I did not call
myself 'Commander-in-Chief' (chef de guerre).
All those are words which my secretary substituted;
or mayhap he misheard me or forgot what I said."

She did not look at me when she said it: she
spared me that embarrassment. I hadn't misheard
her at all, and hadn't forgotten. I changed her
language purposely, for she was Commander-in-
Chief and entitled to call herself so, and it was
becoming and proper, too; and who was going
to surrender anything to the King?—at that time a

---

stick, a cipher? If any surrendering was done, it
would be to the noble Maid of Vaucouleurs, already
famed and formidable though she had not yet struck
a blow.

Ah, there would have been a fine and disagreeable
episode (for me) there, if that pitiless court had
discovered that the very scribbler of that piece of
dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was present—
and not only present, but helping build the record;
and not only that, but destined at a far distant day
to testify against lies and perversions smuggled into
it by Cauchon and deliver them over to eternal
infamy!

"Do you acknowledge that you dictated this
proclamation?"

"I do."

"Have you repented of it? Do you retract it?"

Ah, then she was indignant!

"No! Not even these chains"—and she shook
them—"not even these chains can chill the hopes
that I uttered there. And more!"—she rose, and
stood a moment with a divine strange light kindling
in her face, then her words burst forth as in a flood
—"I warn you now that before seven years a
disaster will smite the English, oh, many fold greater
than the fall of Orleans! and—"

"Silence! Sit down!"

"—and then, soon after, they will lose all France!"

Now consider these things. The French armies
no longer existed. The French cause was standing

---

still, our King was standing still, there was no hint
that by and by the Constable Richemont would
come forward and take up the great work of Joan of
Arc and finish it. In face of all this, Joan made
that prophecy—made it with perfect confidence—
and it came true.

For within five years Paris fell—1436—and our
King marched into it flying the victor's flag. So
the first part of the prophecy was then fulfilled—in
fact, almost the entire prophecy; for, with Paris
in our hands, the fulfillment of the rest of it was
assured.

Twenty years later all France was ours excepting a
single town—Calais.

Now that will remind you of an earlier prophecy of
Joan's. At the time that she wanted to take Paris
and could have done it with ease if our King had but
consented, she said that that was the golden time;
that, with Paris ours, all France would be ours in six
months. But if this golden opportunity to recover
France was wasted, said she, "I give you twenty
years to do it in."

She was right. After Paris fell, in 1436, the rest
of the work had to be done city by city, castle by
castle, and it took twenty years to finish it.

Yes, it was the first day of March, 1431, there in
the court, that she stood in the view of everybody
and uttered that strange and incredible prediction.
Now and then, in this world, somebody's prophecy
turns up correct, but when you come to look into it

---

there is sure to be considerable room for suspicion
that the prophecy was made after the fact. But
here the matter is different. There in that court
Joan's prophecy was set down in the official record
at the hour and moment of its utterance, years be-
fore the fulfillment, and there you may read it to this
day. Twenty-five years after Joan's death the
record was produced in the great Court of the
Rehabilitation and verified under oath by Manchon
and me, and surviving judges of our court confirmed
the exactness of the record in their testimony.

Joan's startling utterance on that now so celebrated
first of March stirred up a great turmoil, and it was
some time before it quieted down again. Naturally,
everybody was troubled, for a prophecy is a grisly
and awful thing, whether one thinks it ascends from
hell or comes down from heaven. All that these
people felt sure of was, that the inspiration back of
it was genuine and puissant. They would have given
their right hands to know the source of it.

At last the questions began again.

"How do you know that those things are going to
happen?"

"I know it by revelation. And I know it as surely
as I know that you sit here before me."

This sort of answer was not going to allay the
spreading uneasiness. Therefore, after some further
dallying the judge got the subject out of the way and
took up one which he could enjoy more.

"What language do your Voices speak?"

---

"French."

"St. Marguerite, too?"

"Verily; why not? She is on our side, not on
the English?"

Saints and angels who did not condescend to speak
English! a grave affront. They could not be
brought into court and punished for contempt, but
the tribunal could take silent note of Joan's remark
and remember it against her; which they did. It
might be useful by and by.

"Do your saints and angels wear jewelry?—
crowns, rings, earrings?"

To Joan, questions like this were profane frivolities
and not worthy of serious notice; she answered in-
differently. But the question brought to her mind
another matter, and she turned upon Cauchon and
said:

"I had two rings. They have been taken away
from me during my captivity. You have one of
them. It is the gift of my brother. Give it back to
me. If not to me, then I pray that it be given to
the Church."

The judges conceived the idea that maybe these
rings were for the working of enchantments. Per-
haps they could be made to do Joan a damage.

"Where is the other ring?"

"The Burgundians have it."

"Where did you get it?"

"My father and mother gave it to me."

"Describe it."

---

"It is plain and simple and has 'Jesus and
Mary' engraved upon it."

Everybody could see that that was not a valuable
equipment to do devil's work with. So that trail
was not worth following. Still, to make sure, one
of the judges asked Joan if she had ever cured sick
people by touching them with the ring. She said
no.

"Now as concerning the fairies, that were used
to abide near by Domremy whereof there are
many reports and traditions. It is said that your
godmother surprised these creatures on a summer's
night dancing under the tree called l'Arbre Fée de
Bourlemont. Is it not possible that your pretended
saints and angels are but those fairies?"

"Is that in your proces?"

She made no other answer.

"Have you not conversed with St. Marguerite
and St. Catherine under that tree?"

"I do not know."

"Or by the fountain near the tree?"

"Yes, sometimes."

"What promises did they make you?"

"None but such as they had God's warrant for."

"But what promises did they make?"

"That is not in your proces; yet I will say this
much: they told me that the King would become
master of his kingdom in spite of his enemies."

"And what else?"

There was a pause; then she said humbly:

---

"They promised to lead me to Paradise."

If faces do really betray what is passing in men's
minds, a fear came upon many in that house, at this
time, that maybe, after all, a chosen servant and
herald of God was here being hunted to her death.
The interest deepened. Movements and whisper-
ings ceased: the stillness became almost painful.

Have you noticed that almost from the beginning
the nature of the questions asked Joan showed that
in some way or other the questioner very often
already knew his fact before he asked his question?
Have you noticed that somehow or other the ques-
tioners usually knew just how and where to search
for Joan's secrets; that they really knew the bulk of
her privacies—a fact not suspected by her—and
that they had no task before them but to trick her
into exposing those secrets?

Do you remember Loyseleur, the hypocrite, the
treacherous priest, tool of Cauchon? Do you re-
member that under the sacred seal of the confes-
sional Joan freely and trustingly revealed to him
everything concerning her history save only a few
things regarding her supernatural revelations which
her Voices had forbidden her to tell to anyone—and
that the unjust judge, Cauchon, was a hidden listener
all the time?

Now you understand how the inquisitors were able
to devise that long array of minutely prying ques-
tions; questions whose subtlety and ingenuity and
penetration are astonishing until we come to remem-

---

ber Loyseleur's performance and recognize their
source. Ah, Bishop of Beauvais, you are now
lamenting this cruel iniquity these many years in
hell! Yes verily, unless one has come to your help.
There is but one among the redeemed that would do
it; and it is futile to hope that that one has not
already done it—Joan of Arc.

We will return to the court and the questionings.

"Did they make you still another promise?"

"Yes, but that is not in your proces. I will not tell
it now, but before three months I will tell it you."

The judge seems to know the matter he is asking
about, already; one gets this idea from his next
question.

"Did your Voices tell you that you would be
liberated before three months?"

Joan often showed a little flash of surprise at the
good guessing of the judges, and she showed one
this time. I was frequently in terror to find my
mind (which I could not control) criticising the
Voices and saying, "They counsel her to speak
boldly—a thing which she would do without any
suggestion from them or anybody else—but when
it comes to telling her any useful thing, such as how
these conspirators manage to guess their way so
skillfully into her affairs, they are always off attend-
ing to some other business."

I am reverent by nature; and when such thoughts
swept through my head they made me cold with fear,
and if there was a storm and thunder at the time, I

---

was so ill that I could but with difficulty abide at
my post and do my work.

Joan answered:

"That is not in your proces. I do not know
when I shall be set free, but some who wish me out
of this world will go from it before me."

It made some of them shiver.

"Have your Voices told you that you will be de-
livered from this prison?"

Without a doubt they had, and the judge knew it
before he asked the question.

"Ask me again in three months and I will tell
you." She said it with such a happy look, the
tired prisoner! And I? And Noël Rainguesson,
drooping yonder?—why, the floods of joy went
streaming through us from crown to sole! It was
all that we could do to hold still and keep from mak-
ing fatal exposure of our feelings.

She was to be set free in three months. That was
what she meant; we saw it. The Voices had told
her so, and told her true—true to the very day—
May 30th. But we know now that they had merci-
fully hidden from her how she was to be set free,
but left her in ignorance. Home again! That was
our understanding of it—Noël's and mine; that
was our dream; and now we would count the days,
the hours, the minutes. They would fly lightly
along; they would soon be over. Yes, we would
carry our idol home; and there, far from the pomps
and tumults of the world, we would take up our

---

happy life again and live it out as we had begun it,
in the free air and the sunshine, with the friendly sheep
and the friendly people for comrades, and the grace
and charm of the meadows, the woods, and the river
always before our eyes and their deep peace in our
hearts. Yes, that was our dream, the dream that
carried us bravely through that three months to an
exact and awful fulfillment, the thought of which
would have killed us, I think, if we had foreknown
it and been obliged to bear the burden of it upon
our hearts the half of those heavy days.

Our reading of the prophecy was this: We be-
lieved the King's soul was going to be smitten with
remorse; and that he would privately plan a rescue
with Joan's old lieutenants, D'Alençon and the
Bastard and La Hire, and that this rescue would take
place at the end of the three months. So we made
up our minds to be ready and take a hand in it.

In the present and also in later sittings Joan was
urged to name the exact day of her deliverance; but
she could not do that. She had not the permission
of her Voices. Moreover, the Voices themselves did
not name the precise day. Ever since the fulfillment
of the prophecy, I have believed that Joan had the
idea that her deliverance was going to come in the
form of death. But not that death! Divine as she
was, dauntless as she was in battle, she was human
also. She was not solely a saint, an angel, she was
a claymade girl also—as human a girl as any in the
world, and full of a human girl's sensitivenesses and

---

tendernesses and delicacies. And so, that death!
No, she could not have lived the three months with
that one before her, I think. You remember that
the first time she was wounded she was frightened,
and cried, just as any other girl of seventeen would
have done, although she had known for eighteen
days that she was going to be wounded on that very
day. No, she was not afraid of any ordinary death,
and an ordinary death was what she believed the
prophecy of deliverance meant, I think, for her face
showed happiness, not horror, when she uttered it.

Now I will explain why I think as I do. Five
weeks before she was captured in the battle of Com-
piègne, her Voices told her what was coming. They
did not tell her the day or the place, but said she
would be taken prisoner and that it would be before
the feast of St. John. She begged that death, cer-
tain and swift, should be her fate, and the captivity
brief; for she was a free spirit, and dreaded the con-
finement. The Voices made no promise, but only
told her to bear whatever came. Now as they did
not refuse the swift death, a hopeful young thing
like Joan would naturally cherish that fact and make
the most of it, allowing it to grow and establish itself
in her mind. And so now that she was told she was
to be "delivered" in three months, I think she be-
lieved it meant that she would die in her bed in the
prison, and that that was why she looked happy
and content—the gates of Paradise standing open
for her, the time so short, you see, her troubles so

---

soon to be over, her reward so close at hand. Yes,
that would make her look happy, that would make
her patient and bold, and able to fight her fight out
like a soldier. Save herself if she could, of course,
and try her best, for that was the way she was made;
but die with her face to the front if die she must.

Then later, when she charged Cauchon with trying
to kill her with a poisoned fish, her notion that
she was to be "delivered" by death in the prison
—if she had it, and I believe she had—would
naturally be greatly strengthened, you see.

But I am wandering from the trial. Joan was
asked to definitely name the time that she would be
delivered from prison.

"I have always said that I was not permitted to
tell you everything. I am to be set free, and I de-
sire to ask leave of my Voices to tell you the day.
This is why I wish for delay."

"Do your Voices forbid you to tell the truth?"

"Is it that you wish to know matters concerning
the King of France? I tell you again that he will
regain his kingdom, and that I know it as well as I
know that you sit here before me in this tribunal."
She sighed and, after a little pause, added: "I
should be dead but for this revelation, which com-
forts me always."

Some trivial questions were asked her about St.
Michael's dress and appearance. She answered
them with dignity, but one saw that they gave her
pain. After a little she said:

---

"I have great joy in seeing him, for when I see
him I have the feeling that I am not in mortal sin."
She added, "Sometimes St. Marguerite and St.
Catherine have allowed me to confess myself to
them."

Here was a possible chance to set a successful
snare for her innocence.

"When you confessed were you in mortal sin, do
you think?"

But her reply did her no hurt. So the inquiry
was shifted once more to the revelations made to the
King—secrets which the court had tried again and
again to force out of Joan, but without success.

"Now as to the sign given to the King—"

"I have already told you that I will tell you noth-
ing about it."

"Do you know what the sign was?"

"As to that, you will not find out from me."

All this refers to Joan's secret interview with the
King—held apart, though two or three others were
present. It was known—through Loyseleur, of
course—that this sign was a crown and was a pledge
of the verity of Joan's mission. But that is all a
mystery until this day—the nature of the crown, I
mean—and will remain a mystery to the end of
time. We can never know whether a real crown de-
scended upon the King's head, or only a symbol,
the mystic fabric of a vision.

"Did you see a crown upon the King's head
when he received the revelation?"

---

"I cannot tell you as to that, without perjury."

"Did the King have that crown at Rheims?"

"I think the King put upon his head a crown
which he found there; but a much richer one was
brought him afterwards."

"Have you seen that one?"

"I cannot tell you, without perjury. But whether
I have seen it or not, I have heard say that it was
rich and magnificent."

They went on and pestered her to weariness about
that mysterious crown, but they got nothing more
out of her. The sitting closed. A long, hard day
for all of us.

---

CHAPTER X.

The court rested a day, then took up work again
on Saturday the third of March.

This was one of our stormiest sessions. The
whole court was out of patience; and with good
reason. These three-score distinguished churchmen,
illustrious tacticians, veteran legal gladiators, had
left important posts where their supervision was
needed, to journey hither from various regions and
accomplish a most simple and easy matter—con-
demn and send to death a country lass of nineteen
who could neither read nor write, knew nothing of
the wiles and perplexities of legal procedure, could
call not a single witness in her defense, was allowed
no advocate or adviser, and must conduct her case
by herself against a hostile judge and a packed jury.
In two hours she would be hopelessly entangled,
routed, defeated, convicted. Nothing could be more
certain than this—so they thought. But it was a
mistake. The two hours had strung out into days;
what promised to be a skirmish had expanded into
a siege; the thing which had looked so easy had
proven to be surprisingly difficult; the light victim

---

who was to have been puffed away like a feather
remained planted like a rock; and on top of all this,
if anybody had a right to laugh it was the country
lass and not the court.

She was not doing that, for that was not her
spirit; but others were doing it. The whole town
was laughing in its sleeve, and the court knew it,
and its dignity was deeply hurt. The members
could not hide their annoyance.

And so, as I have said, the session was stormy.
It was easy to see that these men had made up their
minds to force words from Joan to-day which should
shorten up her case and bring it to a prompt con-
clusion. It shows that after all their experience
with her they did not know her yet. They went
into the battle with energy. They did not leave the
questioning to a particular member; no, everybody
helped. They volleyed questions at Joan from all
over the house, and sometimes so many were talking
at once that she had to ask them to deliver their fire
one at a time and not by platoons. The beginning
was as usual:

"You are once more required to take the oath
pure and simple."

"I will answer to what is in the proces verbal.
When I do more, I will choose the occasion for
myself."

That old ground was debated and fought over
inch by inch with great bitterness and many threats.
But Joan remained steadfast, and the questionings

---

had to shift to other matters. Half an hour was
spent over Joan's apparitions—their dress, hair,
general appearance, and so on—in the hope of
fishing something of a damaging sort out of the
replies; but with no result.

Next, the male attire was reverted to, of course.
After many well-worn questions had been re-asked,
one or two new ones were put forward.

"Did not the King or the Queen sometimes ask
you to quit the male dress?"

"That is not in your proces."

"Do you think you would have sinned if you had
taken the dress of your sex?"

"I have done best to serve and obey my sovereign
Lord and Master."

After a while the matter of Joan's Standard was
taken up, in the hope of connecting magic and
witchcraft with it.

"Did not your men copy your banner in their
pennons?"

"The lancers of my guard did it. It was to dis-
tinguish them from the rest of the forces. It was
their own idea."

"Were they often renewed?"

"Yes. When the lances were broken they were
renewed."

The purpose of the questions unveils itself in the
next one.

"Did you not say to your men that pennons
made like your banner would be lucky?"

---

The soldier-spirit in Joan was offended at this
puerility. She drew herself up, and said with dig-
nity and fire: "What I said to them was, 'Ride
these English down!' and I did it myself."

Whenever she flung out a scornful speech like that
at these French menials in English livery it lashed
them into a rage; and that is what happened this
time. There were ten, twenty, sometimes even
thirty of them on their feet at a time, storming at
the prisoner minute after minute, but Joan was not
disturbed.

By and by there was peace, and the inquiry was
resumed.

It was now sought to turn against Joan the thou-
sand loving honors which had been done her when
she was raising France out of the dirt and shame of
a century of slavery and castigation.

"Did you not cause paintings and images of
yourself to be made?"

"No. At Arras I saw a painting of myself
kneeling in armor before the King and delivering him
a letter; but I caused no such things to be made."

"Were not masses and prayers said in your
honor?"

"If it was done it was not by my command. But
if any prayed for me I think it was no harm."

"Did the French people believe you were sent of
God?"

"As to that, I know not; but whether they be-
lieved it or not, I was not the less sent of God."

---

"If they thought you were sent of God do you
think it was well thought?"

"If they believed it, their trust was not abused."

"What impulse was it, think you, that moved the
people to kiss your hands, your feet, and your vest-
ments?"

"They were glad to see me, and so they did those
things; and I could not have prevented them if I
had had the heart. Those poor people came
lovingly to me because I had not done them any
hurt, but had done the best I could for them ac-
cording to my strength."

See what modest little words she uses to describe
that touching spectacle, her marches about France
walled in on both sides by the adoring multitudes:
"They were glad to see me." Glad? Why, they
were transported with joy to see her. When they
could not kiss her hands or her feet, they knelt in
the mire and kissed the hoof-prints of her horse.
They worshiped her; and that is what these priests
were trying to prove. It was nothing to them
that she was not to blame for what other people
did. No, if she was worshiped, it was enough;
she was guilty of mortal sin. Curious logic, one
must say.

"Did you not stand sponsor for some children
baptized at Rheims?"

"At Troyes I did, and at St. Denis; and I
named the boys Charles, in honor of the King, and
the girls I named Joan."

---

"Did not women touch their rings to those which
you wore?"

"Yes, many did, but I did not know their reason
for it."

"At Rheims was your Standard carried into the
church? Did you stand at the altar with it in your
hand at the Coronation?"

"Yes."

"In passing through the country did you confess
yourself in the churches and receive the sacrament?"

"Yes."

"In the dress of a man?"

"Yes. But I do not remember that I was in
armor."

It was almost a concession! almost a half-sur-
render of the permission granted her by the Church
at Poitiers to dress as a man. The wily court shifted
to another matter: to pursue this one at this time
might call Joan's attention to her small mistake, and
by her native cleverness she might recover her lost
ground. The tempestuous session had worn her
and drowsed her alertness.

"It is reported that you brought a dead child to
life in the church at Lagny. Was that in answer to
your prayers?"

"As to that, I have no knowledge. Other young
girls were praying for the child, and I joined them
and prayed also, doing no more than they."

"Continue."

"While we prayed it came to life, and cried. It

---

had been dead three days, and was as black as my
doublet. It was straightway baptized, then it passed
from life again and was buried in holy ground."

"Why did you jump from the tower of Beaurevoir
by night and try to escape?"

"I would go to the succor of Compiègne."

It was insinuated that this was an attempt to
commit the deep crime of suicide to avoid falling
into the hands of the English.

"Did you not say that you would rather die than
be delivered into the power of the English?"

Joan answered frankly; without perceiving the
trap:

"Yes; my words were, that I would rather that
my soul be returned unto God than that I should
fall into the hands of the English."

It was now insinuated that when she came to,
after jumping from the tower, she was angry and
blasphemed the name of God; and that she did it
again when she heard of the defection of the Com-
mandant of Soissons. She was hurt and indignant
at this, and said:

"It is not true. I have never cursed. It is not
my custom to swear."

---

CHAPTER XI.

Ahalt was called. It was time. Cauchon was
losing ground in the fight, Joan was gaining
it. There were signs that here and there in the
court a judge was being softened toward Joan by
her courage, her presence of mind, her fortitude,
her constancy, her piety, her simplicity and candor,
her manifest purity, the nobility of her character,
her fine intelligence, and the good brave fight she
was making, all friendless and alone, against unfair
odds, and there was grave room for fear that this
softening process would spread further and presently
bring Cauchon's plans in danger.

Something must be done, and it was done.
Cauchon was not distinguished for compassion, but
he now gave proof that he had it in his character.
He thought it pity to subject so many judges to the
prostrating fatigues of this trial when it could be
conducted plenty well enough by a handful of them.
Oh, gentle Judge! But he did not remember to
modify the fatigues for the little captive.

He would let all the judges but a handful go, but
he would select the handful himself, and he did.

---

He chose tigers. If a lamb or two got in, it was by
oversight, not intention; and he knew what to do
with lambs when discovered.

He called a small council now, and during five
days they sifted the huge bulk of answers thus far
gathered from Joan. They winnowed it of all chaff,
all useless matter—that is, all matter favorable to
Joan; they saved up all matter which could be
twisted to her hurt, and out of this they constructed
a basis for a new trial which should have the sem-
blance of a continuation of the old one. Another
change. It was plain that the public trial had
wrought damage: its proceedings had been dis-
cussed all over the town and had moved many to
pity the abused prisoner. There should be no more
of that. The sittings should be secret hereafter,
and no spectators admitted. So Noël could come
no more. I sent this news to him. I had not the
heart to carry it myself. I would give the pain a
chance to modify before I should see him in the
evening.

On the 10th of March the secret trial began. A
week had passed since I had seen Joan. Her ap-
pearance gave me a great shock. She looked tired
and weak. She was listless and far away, and her
answers showed that she was dazed and not able to
keep perfect run of all that was done and said.
Another court would not have taken advantage of
her state, seeing that her life was at stake here, but
would have adjourned and spared her. Did this

---

one? No; it worried her for hours, and with a
glad and eager ferocity, making all it could out of
this great chance, the first one it had had.

She was tortured into confusing herself concern-
ing the "sign" which had been given the King, and
the next day this was continued hour after hour.
As a result, she made partial revealments of particu-
lars forbidden by her Voices; and seemed to me to
state as facts things which were but allegories and
visions mixed with facts.

The third day she was brighter, and looked less
worn. She was almost her normal self again, and
did her work well. Many attempts were made to
beguile her into saying indiscreet things, but she
saw the purpose in view and answered with tact and
wisdom.

"Do you know if St. Catherine and St. Mar-
guerite hate the English?"

"They love whom Our Lord loves, and hate
whom He hates."

"Does God hate the English?"

"Of the love or the hatred of God toward the
English I know nothing." Then she spoke up with
the old martial ring in her voice and the old audacity
in her words, and added, "But I know this—that
God will send victory to the French, and that all the
English will be flung out of France but the dead
ones!"

"Was God on the side of the English when they
were prosperous in France?"

---

"I do not know if God hates the French, but I
think that he allowed them to be chastised for their
sins."

It was a sufficiently naïve way to account for a
chastisement which had now strung out for ninety-
six years. But nobody found fault with it. There
was nobody there who would not punish a sinner
ninety-six years if he could, nor anybody there who
would ever dream of such a thing as the Lord's
being any shade less stringent than men.

"Have you ever embraced St. Marguarite and
St. Catherine?"

"Yes, both of them."

The evil face of Cauchon betrayed satisfaction
when she said that.

"When you hung garlands upon L'Arbre Fée de
Bourlemont, did you do it in honor of your appari-
tions?"

"No."

Satisfaction again. No doubt Cauchon would
take it for granted that she hung them there out of
sinful love for the fairies.

"When the saints appeared to you did you bow,
did you make reverence, did you kneel?"

"Yes; I did them the most honor and the most
reverence that I could."

A good point for Cauchon if he could eventually
make it appear that these were no saints to whom
she had done reverence, but devils in disguise.

Now there was the matter of Joan's keeping her

---

supernatural commerce a secret from her parents.
Much might be made of that. In fact, particular
emphasis had been given to it in a private remark
written in the margin of the proces: "She concealed
her visions from her parents and from every one."
Possibly this disloyalty to her parents might itself
be the sign of the satanic source of her mission.

"Do you think it was right to go away to
the wars without getting your parents' leave? It
is written one must honor his father and his
mother."

"I have obeyed them in all things but that. And
for that I have begged their forgiveness in a letter
and gotten it."

"Ah, you asked their pardon? So you knew
you were guilty of sin in going without their leave!"

Joan was stirred. Her eyes flashed, and she ex-
claimed:

"I was commanded of God, and it was right to
go! If I had had a hundred fathers and mothers
and been a king's daughter to boot I would have
gone."

"Did you never ask your Voices if you might tell
your parents?"

"They were willing that I should tell them, but I
would not for anything have given my parents that
pain."

To the minds of the questioners this headstrong
conduct savored of pride. That sort of pride would
move one to seek sacrilegious adorations.

---

"Did not your Voices call you Daughter of
God?"

Joan answered with simplicity, and unsuspiciously:

"Yes; before the siege of Orleans and since, they
have several times called me Daughter of God."

Further indications of pride and vanity were
sought.

"What horse were you riding when you were
captured? Who gave it you?"

"The King."

"You had other things—riches—of the King?"

"For myself I had horses and arms, and money
to pay the service in my household."

"Had you not a treasury?"

"Yes. Ten or twelve thousand crowns." Then
she said with naïveté, "It was not a great sum to
carry on a war with."

"You have it yet?"

"No. It is the King's money. My brothers
hold it for him."

"What were the arms which you left as an offer-
ing in the church of St. Denis?"

"My suit of silver mail and a sword."

"Did you put them there in order that they
might be adored?"

"No. It was but an act of devotion. And it is
the custom of men of war who have been wounded
to make such offering there. I had been wounded
before Paris."

Nothing appealed to those stony hearts, those dull

---

imaginations—not even this pretty picture, so sim-
ply drawn, of the wounded girl-soldier hanging her
toy harness there in curious companionship with the
grim and dusty iron mail of the historic defenders of
France. No, there was nothing in it for them;
nothing, unless evil and injury for that innocent
creature could be gotten out of it somehow.

"Which aided most—you the Standard, or the
Standard you?"

"Whether it was the Standard or whether it was
I, is nothing—the victories came from God."

"But did you base your hopes of victory in your-
self or in your Standard?"

"In neither. In God, and not otherwhere."

"Was not your Standard waved around the King's
head at the Coronation?"

"No. It was not."

"Why was it that your Standard had place at the
crowning of the King in the Cathedral of Rheims,
rather than those of the other captains?"

Then, soft and low, came that touching speech
which will live as long as language lives, and pass
into all tongues, and move all gentle hearts where-
soever it shall come, down to the latest day:

"It had borne the burden, it had earned the
honor."*

What she said has been many times translated, but never with
success. There is a haunting pathos about the original which eludes
all efforts to convey it into our tongue. It is as subtle as an odor, and
escapes in the transmission. Her words were these:

"Il avait été a la peine, c'etait bien raison qu'il fut a l' honneur."

Monseigneur Ricard, Honorary Vicar-General to the Archbishop of
Aix, finely speaks of it ("Jeanne d' Arc la Vénérable," page 197) as
"that sublime reply, enduring in the history of celebrated sayings like
the cry of a French and Christian soul wounded unto death in its
patriotism and its faith."—Translator.

---

How simple it is, and how beautiful. And how
it beggars the studied eloquence of the masters of
oratory. Eloquence was a native gift of Joan of
Arc; it came from her lips without effort and with-
out preparation. Her words were as sublime as her
deeds, as sublime as her character; they had their
source in a great heart and were coined in a great
brain.

---

CHAPTER XII.

Now, as a next move, this small secret court of
holy assassins did a thing so base that even at
this day, in my old age, it is hard to speak of it
with patience.

In the beginning of her commerce with her Voices
there at Domremy, the child Joan solemnly devoted
her life to God, vowing her pure body and her pure
soul to his service. You will remember that her
parents tried to stop her from going to the wars by
haling her to the court at Toul to compel her to
make a marriage which she had never promised to
make—a marriage with our poor, good, windy,
big, hard-fighting and most dear and lamented com-
rade, the Standard-Bearer, who fell in honorable
battle and sleeps in God these sixty years, peace to
his ashes! And you will remember how Joan, six-
teen years old, stood up in that venerable court and
conducted her case all by herself, and tore the poor
Paladin's case to rags and blew it away with a
breath; and how the astonished old judge on the
bench spoke of her as "this marvelous child."

You remember all that. Then think what I felt,
to see these false priests, here in the tribunal wherein

---

Joan had fought a fourth lone fight in three years,
deliberately twist that matter entirely around and try
to make out that Joan haled the Paladin into court
and pretended that he had promised to marry her,
and was bent on making him do it.

Certainly there was no baseness that those people
were ashamed to stoop to in their hunt for that
friendless girl's life. What they wanted to show
was this—that she had committed the sin of relaps-
ing from her vow and trying to violate it.

Joan detailed the true history of the case, but lost
her temper as she went along, and finished with
some words for Cauchon which he remembers yet,
whether he is fanning himself in the world he be-
longs in or has swindled his way into the other.

The rest of this day and part of the next the
court labored upon the old theme—the male attire.
It was shabby work for those grave men to be en-
gaged in; for they well knew one of Joan's reasons
for clinging to the male dress was, that soldiers of
the guard were always present in her room whether
she was asleep or awake, and that the male dress
was a better protection for her modesty than the
other.

The court knew that one of Joan's purposes had
been the deliverance of the exiled Duke of Orleans,
and they were curious to know how she had intended
to manage it. Her plan was characteristically busi-
ness-like, and her statement of it as characteristically
simple and straightforward:

---

"I would have taken English prisoners enough in
France for his ransom; and failing that, I would
have invaded England and brought him out by
force."

That was just her way. If a thing was to be done,
it was love first, and hammer and tongs to follow;
but no shilly-shallying between. She added with a
little sigh:

"If I had had my freedom three years, I would
have delivered him."

"Have you the permission of your Voices to
break out of prison whenever you can?"

"I have asked their leave several times, but they
have not given it."

I think it is as I have said, she expected the
deliverance of death, and within the prison walls,
before the three months should expire.

"Would you escape if you saw the doors open?"

She spoke up frankly and said:

"Yes—for I should see in that the permission of
Our Lord. God helps who help themselves, the
proverb says. But except I thought I had per-
mission, I would not go."

Now, then, at this point, something occurred
which convinces me, every time I think of it—and
it struck me so at the time—that for a moment, at
least, her hopes wandered to the King, and put into
her mind the same notion about her deliverance
which Noël and I had settled upon—a rescue by
her old soldiers. I think the idea of the rescue did

---

occur to her, but only as a passing thought, and that
it quickly passed away.

Some remark of the Bishop of Beauvais moved
her to remind him once more that he was an unfair
judge, and had no right to preside there, and that he
was putting himself in great danger.

"What danger?" he asked.

"I do not know. St. Catherine has promised
me help, but I do not know the form of it. I do
not know whether I am to be delivered from this
prison or whether when you send me to the scaffold
there will happen a trouble by which I shall be set
free. Without much thought as to this matter, I
am of the opinion that it may be one or the other."
After a pause she added these words, memorable
forever—words whose meaning she may have mis-
caught, misunderstood, as to that we can never
know; words which she may have rightly under-
stood; as to that also, we can never know; but words
whose mystery fell away from them many a year
ago and revealed their real meaning to all the world:

"But what my Voices have said clearest is, that I
shall be delivered by a great victory." She paused,
my heart was beating fast, for to me that great vic-
tory meant the sudden bursting in of our old soldiers
with war-cry and clash of steel at the last moment
and the carrying off of Joan of Arc in triumph.
But, oh, that thought had such a short life! For
now she raised her head and finished, with those
solemn words which men still so often quote and

---

dwell upon—words which filled me with fear, they
sounded so like a prediction. "And always they
say 'Submit to whatever comes; do not grieve for
your martyrdom; from it you will ascend into the
Kingdom of Paradise.'"

Was she thinking of fire and the stake? I think
not. I thought of it myself, but I believe she was
only thinking of this slow and cruel martyrdom of
chains and captivity and insult. Surely, martyrdom
was the right name for it.

It was Jean de la Fontaine who was asking the
questions. He was willing to make the most he
could out of what she had said:

"As the Voices have told you you are going to
Paradise, you feel certain that that will happen and
that you will not be damned in hell. Is that so?"

"I believe what they told me. I know that I
shall be saved."

"It is a weighty answer."

"To me the knowledge that I shall be saved is
a great treasure."

"Do you think that after that revelation you
could be able to commit mortal sin?"

"As to that, I do not know. My hope for salva-
tion is in holding fast to my oath to keep my body
and my soul pure."

"Since you know you are to be saved do you
think it necessary to go to confession?"

The snare was ingeniously devised, but Joan's
simple and humble answer left it empty:

---

"One cannot keep his conscience too clean."

We were now arriving at the last day of this new
trial. Joan had come through the ordeal well. It
had been a long and wearisome struggle for all con-
cerned. All ways had been tried to convict the ac-
cused, and all had failed, thus far. The inquisitors
were thoroughly vexed and dissatisfied. However,
they resolved to make one more effort, put in one
more day's work. This was done—March 17th.
Early in the sitting a notable trap was set for Joan:

"Will you submit to the determination of the
Church all your words and deeds, whether good or
bad?"

That was well planned. Joan was in imminent
peril now. If she should heedlessly say yes, it
would put her mission itself upon trial, and one
would know how to decide its source and character
promptly. If she should say no, she would render
herself chargeable with the crime of heresy.

But she was equal to the occasion. She drew a
distinct line of separation between the Church's
authority over her as a subject member, and the
matter of her mission. She said she loved the
Church and was ready to support the Christian faith
with all her strength; but as to the works done
under her mission, those must be judged by God
alone, who had commanded them to be done.

The judge still insisted that she submit them to
the decision of the Church. She said:

"I will submit them to Our Lord who sent me.

---

It would seem to me that He and His Church are
one, and that there should be no difficulty about
this matter." Then she turned upon the judge and
said, "Why do you make a difficulty where there is
no room for any?"

Then Jean de la Fontaine corrected her notion
that there was but one Church. There were two—
the Church Triumphant, which is God, the saints,
the angels, and the redeemed, and has its seat in
heaven; and the Church Militant, which is our Holy
Father the Pope, Vicar of God, the prelates, the
clergy and all good Christians and Catholics, the
which Church has its seat in the earth, is governed
by the Holy Spirit, and cannot err. "Will you not
submit those matters to the Church Militant?"

"I am come to the King of France from the
Church Triumphant on high by its commandant,
and to that Church I will submit all those things
which I have done. For the Church Militant I have
no other answer now."

The court took note of this straitly worded re-
fusal, and would hope to get profit out of it; but
the matter was dropped for the present, and a long
chase was then made over the old hunting-ground—
the fairies, the visions, the male attire, and all that.

In the afternoon the satanic Bishop himself took
the chair and presided over the closing scenes of
the trial. Along toward the finish, this question
was asked by one of the judges:

"You have said to my lord the Bishop that you

---

would answer him as you would answer before our
Holy Father the Pope, and yet there are several
questions which you continually refuse to answer.
Would you not answer the Pope more fully than
you have answered before my lord of Beauvais?
Would you not feel obliged to answer the Pope,
who is the Vicar of God, more fully?"

Now fell a thunder-clap out of a clear sky:

"Take me to the Pope. I will answer to every-
thing that I ought to."

It made the Bishop's purple face fairly blanch
with consternation. If Joan had only known, if she
had only known! She had lodged a mine under
this black conspiracy able to blow the Bishop's
schemes to the four winds of heaven, and she didn't
know it. She had made that speech by mere in-
stinct, not suspecting what tremendous forces were
hidden in it, and there was none to tell her what she
had done. I knew, and Manchon knew; and if she
had known how to read writing we could have hoped
to get the knowledge to her somehow; but speech
was the only way, and none was allowed to approach
her near enough for that. So there she sat, once
more Joan of Arc the Victorious, but all unconscious
of it. She was miserably worn and tired, by the
long day's struggle and by illness, or she must have
noticed the effect of that speech and divined the
reason of it.

She had made many master-strokes, but this was
the master-stroke. It was an appeal to Rome. It

---

was her clear right; and if she had persisted in it
Cauchon's plot would have tumbled about his ears
like a house of cards, and he would have gone from
that place the worst beaten man of the century.
He was daring, but he was not daring enough to
stand up against that demand if Joan had urged it.
But no, she was ignorant, poor thing, and did not
know what a blow she had struck for life and
liberty.

France was not the Church. Rome had no
interest in the destruction of this messenger of God.
Rome would have given her a fair trial, and that
was all that her cause needed. From that trial she
would have gone forth free, and honored, and
blessed.

But it was not so fated. Cauchon at once diverted
the questions to other matters and hurried the trial
quickly to an end.

As Joan moved feebly away, dragging her chains,
I felt stunned and dazed, and kept saying to myself,
"Such a little while ago she said the saving word
and could have gone free; and now, there she goes
to her death; yes, it is to her death, I know it, I
feel it. They will double the guards; they will
never let any come near her now between this and
her condemnation, lest she get a hint and speak that
word again. This is the bitterest day that has come
to me in all this miserable time."

---

CHAPTER XIII.

So the second trial in the prison was over. Over,
and no definite result. The character of it I
have described to you. It was baser in one par-
ticular than the previous one; for this time the
charges had not been communicated to Joan, there-
fore she had been obliged to fight in the dark.
There was no opportunity to do any thinking before-
hand; there was no foreseeing what traps might be
set, and no way to prepare for them. Truly it was
a shabby advantage to take of a girl situated as this
one was. One day, during the course of it, an able
lawyer of Normandy, Maître Lohier, happened to
be in Rouen, and I will give you his opinion of that
trial, so that you may see that I have been honest
with you, and that my partisanship has not made
me deceive you as to its unfair and illegal character.
Cauchon showed Lohier the proces and asked his
opinion about the trial. Now this was the opinion
which he gave to Cauchon. He said that the whole
thing was null and void; for these reasons: i, be-
cause the trial was secret, and full freedom of
speech and action on the part of those present not

---

possible; 2, because the trial touched the honor of
the King of France, yet he was not summoned to
defend himself, nor any one appointed to represent
him; 3, because the charges against the prisoner
were not communicated to her; 4, because the ac-
cused, although young and simple, had been forced
to defend her cause without help of counsel, not-
withstanding she had so much at stake.

Did that please Bishop Cauchon? It did not.
He burst out upon Lohier with the most savage
cursings, and swore he would have him drowned.
Lohier escaped from Rouen and got out of France
with all speed, and so saved his life.

Well, as I have said, the second trial was over,
without definite result. But Cauchon did not give
up. He could trump up another. And still an-
other and another, if necessary. He had the half-
promise of an enormous prize—the Archbishopric
of Rouen—if he should succeed in burning the
body and damning to hell the soul of this young
girl who had never done him any harm; and such a
prize as that, to a man like the Bishop of Beauvais,
was worth the burning and damning of fifty harm-
less girls, let alone one.

So he set to work again straight off next day;
and with high confidence, too, intimating with brutal
cheerfulness that he should succeed this time. It
took him and the other scavengers nine days to dig
matter enough out of Joan's testimony and their own
inventions to build up the new mass of charges.

---

And it was a formidable mass indeed, for it num-
bered sixty-six articles.

This huge document was carried to the castle the
next day, March 27th; and there, before a dozen
carefully-selected judges, the new trial was begun.

Opinions were taken, and the tribunal decided that
Joan should hear the articles read this time. Maybe
that was on account of Lohier's remark upon that
head; or maybe it was hoped that the reading would
kill the prisoner with fatigue—for, as it turned out,
this reading occupied several days. It was also
decided that Joan should be required to answer
squarely to every article, and that if she refused she
should be considered convicted. You see, Cauchon
was managing to narrow her chances more and more
all the time; he was drawing the toils closer and
closer.

Joan was brought in, and the Bishop of Beauvais
opened with a speech to her which ought to have
made even himself blush, so laden it was with
hypocrisy and lies. He said that this court was
composed of holy and pious churchmen whose
hearts were full of benevolence and compassion
toward her, and that they had no wish to hurt her
body, but only a desire to instruct her and lead her
into the way of truth and salvation.

Why, this man was born a devil; now think of
his describing himself and those hardened slaves of
his in such language as that.

And yet, worse was to come. For now having

---

in mind another of Lohier's hints, he had the cold
effrontery to make to Joan a proposition which, I
think, will surprise you when you hear it. He said
that this court, recognizing her untaught estate and
her inability to deal with the complex and difficult
matters which were about to be considered, had de-
termined, out of their pity and their mercifulness,
to allow her to choose one or more persons out of
their own number to help her with counsel and
advice!

Think of that—a court made up of Loyseleur
and his breed of reptiles. It was granting leave to
a lamb to ask help of a wolf. Joan looked up to
see if he was serious, and perceiving that he was at
least pretending to be, she declined, of course.

The Bishop was not expecting any other reply.
He had made a show of fairness and could have it
entered on the minutes, therefore he was satisfied.

Then he commanded Joan to answer straitly to
every accusation; and threatened to cut her off from
the Church if she failed to do that or delayed her
answers beyond a given length of time. Yes, he
was narrowing her chances down, step by step.

Thomas de Courcelles began the reading of that
interminable document, article by article. Joan an-
swered to each article in its turn; sometimes merely
denying its truth, sometimes by saying her answer
would be found in the records of the previous trials.

What a strange document that was, and what an
exhibition and exposure of the heart of man, the

---

one creature authorized to boast that he is made in
the image of God. To know Joan of Arc was to
know one who was wholly noble, pure, truthful,
brave, compassionate, generous, pious, unselfish,
modest, blameless as the very flowers in the fields—
a nature fine and beautiful, a character supremely
great. To know her from that document would be
to know her as the exact reverse of all that. Noth-
ing that she was appears in it, everything that she
was not appears there in detail.

Consider some of the things it charges against
her, and remember who it is it is speaking of. It
calls her a sorceress, a false prophet, an invoker and
companion of evil spirits, a dealer in magic, a person
ignorant of the Catholic faith, a schismatic; she is
sacrilegious, an idolater, an apostate, a blasphemer
of God and his saints, scandalous, seditious, a dis-
turber of the peace; she incites men to war, and to
the spilling of human blood; she discards the decen-
cies and proprieties of her sex, irreverently assuming
the dress of a man and the vocation of a soldier;
she beguiles both princes and people; she usurps
divine honors, and has caused herself to be adored
and venerated, offering her hands and her vestments
to be kissed.

There it is—every fact of her life distorted, per-
verted, reversed. As a child she had loved the
fairies, she had spoken a pitying word for them
when they were banished from their home, she had
played under their tree and around their fountain—

---

hence she was a comrade of evil spirits. She had
lifted France out of the mud and moved her to strike
for freedom, and led her to victory after victory—
hence she was a disturber of the peace—as indeed
she was, and a provoker of war—as indeed she
was again! and France will be proud of it and
grateful for it for many a century to come. And
she had been adored—as if she could help that,
poor thing, or was in any way to blame for it. The
cowed veteran and the wavering recruit had drunk
the spirit of war from her eyes and touched her
sword with theirs and moved forward invincible—
hence she was a sorceress.

And so the document went on, detail by detail,
turning these waters of life to poison, this gold to
dross, these proofs of a noble and beautiful life to
evidences of a foul and odious one.

Of course, the sixty-six articles were just a rehash
of the things which had come up in the course of
the previous trials, so I will touch upon this new
trial but lightly. In fact, Joan went but little into
detail herself, usually merely saying "That is not
true— passez outre;" or, "I have answered that
before—let the clerk read it in his record," or say-
ing some other brief thing.

She refused to have her mission examined and
tried by the earthly Church. The refusal was taken
note of.

She denied the accusation of idolatry and that
she had sought men's homage. She said:

---

"If any kissed my hands and my vestments it
was not by my desire, and I did what I could to
prevent it."

She had the pluck to say to that deadly tribunal
that she did not know the fairies to be evil beings.
She knew it was a perilous thing to say, but it
was not in her nature to speak anything but the
truth when she spoke at all. Danger had no weight
with her in such things. Note was taken of her
remark.

She refused, as always before, when asked if she
would put off the male attire if she were given per-
mission to commune. And she added this:

"When one receives the sacrament, the manner
of his dress is a small thing and of no value in the
eyes of Our Lord."

She was charged with being so stubborn in cling-
ing to her male dress that she would not lay it off
even to get the blessed privilege of hearing mass.
She spoke out with spirit and said:

"I would rather die than be untrue to my oath to
God."

She was reproached with doing man's work in the
wars and thus deserting the industries proper to her
sex. She answered, with some little touch of
soldierly disdain:

"As to the matter of women's work, there's
plenty to do it."

It was always a comfort to me to see the soldier-
spirit crop up in her. While that remained in her

---

she would be Joan of Arc, and able to look trouble
and fate in the face.

"It appears that this mission of yours which you
claim you had from God, was to make war and pour
out human blood."

Joan replied quite simply, contenting herself with
explaining that war was not her first move, but her
second:

"To begin with, I demanded that peace should
be made. If it was refused, then I would fight."

The judge mixed the Burgundians and English
together in speaking of the enemy which Joan had
come to make war upon. But she showed that she
made a distinction between them by act and word,
the Burgundians being Frenchmen and therefore
entitled to less brusque treatment than the English.
She said:

"As to the Duke of Burgundy, I required of him,
both by letters and by his ambassadors, that he
make peace with the King. As to the English, the
only peace for them was that they leave the country
and go home."

Then she said that even with the English she had
shown a pacific disposition, since she had warned
them away by proclamation before attacking them.

"If they had listened to me," said she, "they
would have done wisely." At this point she uttered
her prophecy again, saying with emphasis, "Before
seven years they will see it themselves."

Then they presently began to pester her again

---

about her male costume, and tried to persuade her
to voluntarily promise to discard it. I was never
deep, so I think it no wonder that I was puzzled by
their persistency in what seemed a thing of no con-
sequence, and could not make out what their reason
could be. But we all know now. We all know
now that it was another of their treacherous pro-
jects. Yes, if they could but succeed in getting her
to formally discard it they could play a game upon
her which would quickly destroy her. So they kept
at their evil work until at last she broke out and
said:

"Peace! Without the permission of God I will
not lay it off though you cut off my head!"

At one point she corrected the proces verbal, say-
ing:

"It makes me say that everything which I have
done was done by the counsel of Our Lord. I did
not say that. I said 'all which I have well done.'"

Doubt was cast upon the authenticity of her
mission because of the ignorance and simplicity of
the messenger chosen. Joan smiled at that. She
could have reminded these people that Our Lord,
who is no respecter of persons, had chosen the
lowly for his high purposes even oftener than he had
chosen bishops and cardinals; but she phrased her
rebuke in simpler terms:

"It is the prerogative of Our Lord to choose His
instruments where He will."

She was asked what form of prayer she used in

---

invoking counsel from on high. She said the form
was brief and simple; then she lifted her pallid face
and repeated it, clasping her chained hands:

"Most dear God, in honor of your holy passion I
beseech you, if you love me, that you will reveal to
me what I am to answer to these churchmen. As
concerns my dress, I know by what command I have
put it on, but I know not in what manner I am to
lay it off. I pray you tell me what to do."

She was charged with having dared, against the
precepts of God and His saints, to assume empire
over men and make herself Commander-in-Chief.
That touched the soldier in her. She had a deep
reverence for priests, but the soldier in her had but
small reverence for a priest's opinions about war;
so, in her answer to this charge she did not conde-
scend to go into any explanations or excuses, but
delivered herself with bland indifference and military
brevity.

"If I was Commander-in-Chief, it was to thrash
the English!"

Death was staring her in the face here all the
time, but no matter; she dearly loved to make these
English-hearted Frenchmen squirm, and whenever
they gave her an opening she was prompt to jab her
sting into it. She got great refreshment out of
these little episodes. Her days were a desert; these
were the oases in it.

Her being in the wars with men was charged
against her as an indelicacy. She said:

---

"I had a woman with me when I could—in
towns and lodgings. In the field I always slept in
my armor."

That she and her family had been ennobled by
the King was charged against her as evidence that
the source of her deeds were sordid self-seeking.
She answered that she had not asked this grace of
the King, it was his own act.

This third trial was ended at last. And once
again there was no definite result.

Possibly a fourth trial might succeed in defeating
this apparently unconquerable girl. So the malig-
nant Bishop set himself to work to plan it.

He appointed a commission to reduce the sub-
stance of the sixty six articles to twelve compact
lies, as a basis for the new attempt. This was done.
It took several days.

Meantime Cauchon went to Joan's cell one day,
with Manchon and two of the judges, Isambard de
la Pierre and Martin Ladvenue, to see if he could
not manage somehow to beguile Joan into submit-
ting her mission to the examination and decision of
the church militant—that is to say, to that part of
the church militant which was represented by himself
and his creatures.

Joan once more positively refused. Isambard de
la Pierre had a heart in his body, and he so pitied
this persecuted poor girl that he ventured to do a
very daring thing; for he asked her if she would be
willing to have her case go before the Council of

---

Basel, and said it contained as many priests of her
party as of the English party.

Joan cried out that she would gladly go before so
fairly constructed a tribunal as that; but before
Isambard could say another word Cauchon turned
savagely upon him and exclaimed:

"Shut up, in the devil's name!"

Then Manchon ventured to do a brave thing, too,
though he did it in great fear for his life. He asked
Cauchon if he should enter Joan's submission to the
Council of Basel upon the minutes.

"No! It is not necessary."

"Ah," said poor Joan, reproachfully, "you set
down everything that is against me, but you will not
set down what is for me."

It was piteous. It would have touched the heart
of a brute. But Cauchon was more than that.

---

CHAPTER XIV.

We were now in the first days of April. Joan
was ill. She had fallen ill the 29th of March,
the day after the close of the third trial, and was
growing worse when the scene which I have just de-
scribed occurred in her cell. It was just like
Cauchon to go there and try to get some advantage
out of her weakened state.

Let us note some of the particulars in the new in-
dictment—the Twelve Lies.

Part of the first one says Joan asserts that she has
found her salvation. She never said anything of the
kind. It also says she refuses to submit herself to
the Church. Not true. She was willing to submit
all her acts to this Rouen tribunal except those done
by command of God in fulfillment of her mission.
Those she reserved for the judgment of God. She
refused to recognize Cauchon and his serfs as the
Church, but was willing to go before the Pope or
the Council of Basel.

A clause of another of the Twelve says she admits
having threatened with death those who would not
obey her. Distinctly false. Another clause says

---

she declares that all she has done has been done by
command of God. What she really said was, all
that she had done well—a correction made by her-
self as you have already seen.

Another of the Twelve says she claims that she
has never committed any sin. She never made any
such claim.

Another makes the wearing of the male dress a
sin. If it was, she had high Catholic authority for
committing it—that of the Archbishop of Rheims
and the tribunal of Poitiers.

The Tenth Article was resentful against her for
"pretending" that St. Catherine and St. Marguerite
spoke French and not English, and were French in
their politics.

The Twelve were to be submitted first to the
learned doctors of theology of the University of
Paris for approval. They were copied out and
ready by the night of April 4th. Then Manchon
did another bold thing: he wrote in the margin that
many of the Twelve put statements in Joan's mouth
which were the exact opposite of what she had said.
That fact would not be considered important by
the University of Paris, and would not influence its
decision or stir its humanity, in case it had any—
which it hadn't when acting in a political capacity,
as at present—but it was a brave thing for that
good Manchon to do, all the same.

The Twelve were sent to Paris next day, April
5th. That afternoon there was a great tumult in

---

Rouen, and excited crowds were flocking through all
the chief streets, chattering and seeking for news;
for a report had gone abroad that Joan of Arc was
sick unto death. In truth, these long seances had
worn her out, and she was ill indeed. The heads of
the English party were in a state of consternation;
for if Joan should die uncondemned by the Church
and go to the grave unsmirched, the pity and the
love of the people would turn her wrongs and suffer-
ings and death into a holy martyrdom, and she would
be even a mightier power in France dead than she
had been when alive.

The Earl of Warwick and the English Cardinal
(Winchester) hurried to the castle and sent mes-
sengers flying for physicians. Warwick was a hard
man, a rude, coarse man, a man without compassion.
There lay the sick girl stretched in her chains in her
iron cage—not an object to move man to ungentle
speech, one would think; yet Warwick spoke right
out in her hearing and said to the physicians:

"Mind you take good care of her. The King of
England has no mind to have her die a natural
death. She is dear to him, for he bought her dear,
and he does not want her to die, save at the stake.
Now then, mind you cure her."

The doctors asked Joan what had made her ill.
She said the Bishop of Beauvais had sent her a fish
and she thought it was that.

Then Jean d'Estivet burst out on her, and called
her names and abused her. He understood Joan to

---

be charging the Bishop with poisoning her, you see;
and that was not pleasing to him, for he was one of
Cauchon's most loving and conscienceless slaves,
and it outraged him to have Joan injure his master
in the eyes of these great English chiefs, these being
men who could ruin Cauchon and would promptly
do it if they got the conviction that he was capable
of saving Joan from the stake by poisoning her and
thus cheating the English out of all the real value
gainable by her purchase from the Duke of Bur-
gundy.

Joan had a high fever, and the doctors proposed
to bleed her. Warwick said:

"Be careful about that; she is smart and is
capable of killing herself."

He meant that to escape the stake she might undo
the bandage and let herself bleed to death.

But the doctors bled her anyway, and then she
was better.

Not for long, though. Jean d'Estivet could not
hold still, he was so worried and angry about the
suspicion of poisoning which Joan had hinted at; so
he came back in the evening and stormed at her till
he brought the fever all back again.

When Warwick heard of this he was in a fine
temper, you may be sure, for here was his prey
threatening to escape again, and all through the
over-zeal of this meddling fool. Warwick gave
D'Estivet a quite admirable cursing—admirable as
to strength, I mean, for it was said by persons of

---

culture that the art of it was not good—and after
that the meddler kept still.

Joan remained ill more than two weeks; then she
grew better. She was still very weak, but she could
bear a little persecution now without much danger to
her life. It seemed to Cauchon a good time to
furnish it. So he called together some of his doc-
tors of theology and went to her dungeon. Man-
chon and I went along to keep the record—that is,
to set down what might be useful to Cauchon, and
leave out the rest.

The sight of Joan gave me a shock. Why, she
was but a shadow! It was difficult for me to realize
that this frail little creature with the sad face and
drooping form was the same Joan of Arc that I had
so often seen, all fire and enthusiasm, charging
through a hail of death and the lightning and thunder
of the guns at the head of her battalions. It wrung
my heart to see her looking like this.

But Cauchon was not touched. He made another
of those conscienceless speeches of his, all dripping
with hypocrisy and guile. He told Joan that among
her answers had been some which had seemed to en-
danger religion; and as she was ignorant and with-
out knowledge of the Scriptures, he had brought
some good and wise men to instruct her, if she de-
sired it. Said he, "We are churchmen, and dis-
posed by our good will as well as by our vocation to
procure for you the salvation of your soul and your
body, in every way in our power, just as we would

---

do the like for our nearest kin or for ourselves. In
this we but follow the example of Holy Church,
who never closes the refuge of her bosom against
any that are willing to return."

Joan thanked him for these sayings and said:

"I seem to be in danger of death from this malady;
if it be the pleasure of God that I die here, I beg
that I may be heard in confession and also receive
my Saviour; and that I may be buried in conse-
crated ground."

Cauchon thought he saw his opportunity at last;
this weakened body had the fear of an unblessed
death before it and the pains of hell to follow. This
stubborn spirit would surrender now. So he spoke
out and said:

"Then if you want the Sacraments, you must do
as all good Catholics do, and submit to the Church."

He was eager for her answer; but when it came
there was no surrender in it, she still stood to her
guns. She turned her head away and said wearily:

"I have nothing more to say."

Cauchon's temper was stirred, and he raised his
voice threateningly and said that the more she was
in danger of death the more she ought to amend her
life; and again he refused the things she begged for
unless she would submit to the Church. Joan said:

"If I die in this prison I beg you to have me
buried in holy ground; if you will not, I cast myself
upon my Saviour."

There was some more conversation of the like sort,

---

then Cauchon demanded again, and imperiously,
that she submit herself and all her deeds to the
Church. His threatening and storming went for
nothing. That body was weak, but the spirit in it
was the spirit of Joan of Arc; and out of that came
the steadfast answer which these people were already
so familiar with and detested so sincerely:

"Let come what may, I will neither do nor say
any otherwise than I have said already in your
tribunals."

Then the good theologians took turn about and
worried her with reasonings and arguments and
Scriptures; and always they held the lure of the
Sacraments before her famishing soul, and tried
to bribe her with them to surrender her mission
to the Church's judgment—that is to their judg-
ment—as if they were the Church! But it availed
nothing. I could have told them that beforehand,
if they had asked me. But they never asked me
anything; I was too humble a creature for their
notice.

Then the interview closed with a threat; a threat
of fearful import; a threat calculated to make a
Catholic Christian feel as if the ground were sinking
from under him:

"The Church calls upon you to submit; disobey,
and she will abandon you as if you were a pagan!"

Think of being abandoned by the Church!—that
august Power in whose hands is lodged the fate of
the human race; whose scepter stretches beyond

---

the furthest constellation that twinkles in the sky;
whose authority is over the millions that live and
over the billions that wait trembling in purgatory for
ransom or doom; whose smile opens the gates of
Heaven to you, whose frown delivers you to the
fires of everlasting hell; a Power whose dominion
overshadows and belittles earthly empire as earthly
empire overshadows and belittles the pomps and
shows of a village. To be abandoned by one's
King—yes, that is death, and death is much; but
to be abandoned by Rome, to be abandoned by the
Church! Ah, death is nothing to that, for that is
consignment to endless life—and such a life!

I could see the red waves tossing in that shoreless
lake of fire, I could see the black myriads of the
damned rise out of them and struggle and sink and
rise again; and I knew that Joan was seeing what I
saw, while she paused musing; and I believed that
she must yield now, and in truth I hoped she would,
for these men were able to make the threat
good and deliver her over to eternal suffering, and I
knew that it was in their natures to do it.

But I was foolish to think that thought and hope
that hope. Joan of Arc was not made as others are
made. Fidelity to principle, fidelity to truth, fidelity
to her word, all these were in her bone and in her
flesh—they were parts of her. She could not
change, she could not cast them out. She was the
very genius of Fidelity, she was Steadfastness incar-
nated. Where she had taken her stand and planted

---

her foot, there she would abide; hell itself could
not move her from that place.

Her Voices had not given her permission to make
the sort of submission that was required, therefore
she would stand fast. She would wait, in perfect
obedience, let come what might.

My heart was like lead in my body when I went
out from that dungeon; but she—she was serene,
she was not troubled. She had done what she be-
lieved to be her duty, and that was sufficient; the
consequences were not her affair. The last thing
she said that time was full of this serenity, full of
contented repose:

"I am a good Christian born and baptized, and a
good Christian I will die."

---

CHAPTER XV.

Two weeks went by; the second of May was
come, the chill was departed out of the air,
the wild flowers were springing in the glades and
glens, the birds were piping in the woods, all nature
was brilliant with sunshine, all spirits were renewed
and refreshed, all hearts glad, the world was alive
with hope and cheer, the plain beyond the Seine
stretched away soft and rich and green, the river was
limpid and lovely, the leafy islands were dainty to
see, and flung still daintier reflections of themselves
upon the shining water; and from the tall bluffs
above the bridge Rouen was become again a delight
to the eye, the most exquisite and satisfying picture
of a town that nestles under the arch of heaven any-
where.

When I say that all hearts were glad and hopeful,
I mean it in a general sense. There were exceptions
—we who were the friends of Joan of Arc, also
Joan of Arc herself, that poor girl shut up there in
that frowning stretch of mighty walls and towers:
brooding in darkness, so close to the flooding down-
pour of sunshine yet so impossibly far away from it;

---

so longing for any little glimpse of it, yet so im-
placably denied it by those wolves in the black
gowns who were plotting her death and the blacken-
ing of her good name.

Cauchon was ready to go on with his miserable
work. He had a new scheme to try now. He
would see what persuasion could do—argument,
eloquence, poured out upon the incorrigible cap-
tive from the mouth of a trained expert. That was
his plan. But the reading of the Twelve Articles
to her was not a part of it. No, even Cauchon
was ashamed to lay that monstrosity before her;
even he had a remnant of shame in him, away down
deep, a million fathoms deep, and that remnant
asserted itself now and prevailed.

On this fair second of May, then, the black com-
pany gathered itself together in the spacious chamber
at the end of the great hall of the castle—the Bishop
of Beauvais on his throne, and sixty-two minor
judges massed before him, with the guards and
recorders at their stations and the orator at his desk.

Then we heard the far clank of chains, and pres-
ently Joan entered with her keepers and took her
seat upon her isolated bench. She was looking well
now, and most fair and beautiful after her fortnight's
rest from wordy persecution.

She glanced about and noted the orator. Doubt-
less she divined the situation.

The orator had written his speech all out, and had
it in his hand, though he held it back of him out of

---

sight. It was so thick that it resembled a book.
He began flowingly, but in the midst of a flowery
period his memory failed him and he had to snatch
a furtive glance at his manuscript—which much in-
jured the effect. Again this happened, and then a
third time. The poor man's face was red with em-
barrassment, the whole great house was pitying
him, which made the matter worse; then Joan
dropped in a remark which completed his trouble.
She said:

"Read your book—and then I will answer you!"

Why, it was almost cruel the way those mouldy
veterans laughed; and as for the orator, he looked
so flustered and helpless that almost anybody would
have pitied him, and I had difficulty to keep from
doing it myself. Yes, Joan was feeling very well
after her rest, and the native mischief that was in
her lay near the surface. It did not show when she
made the remark, but I knew it was close in there
back of the words.

When the orator had gotten back his composure
he did a wise thing; for he followed Joan's advice:
he made no more attempts at sham impromptu
oratory, but read his speech straight from his
"book." In the speech he compressed the Twelve
Articles into six and made these his text.

Every now and then he stopped and asked ques-
tions, and Joan replied. The nature of the church
militant was explained, and once more Joan was
asked to submit herself to it.

---

She gave her usual answer.

Then she was asked:

"Do you believe the Church can err?"

"I believe it cannot err; but for those deeds and
words of mine which were done and uttered by com-
mand of God, I will answer to Him alone."

"Will you say that you have no judge upon
earth? Is not our Holy Father the Pope your
judge?"

"I will say nothing to you about it. I have a
good Master who is our Lord and to Him I will
submit all."

Then came these terrible words:

"If you do not submit to the Church you will be
pronounced a heretic by these judges here present
and burned at the stake!"

Ah, that would have smitten you or me dead with
fright, but it only roused the lion heart of Joan of
Arc, and in her answer rang that martial note which
had used to stir her soldiers like a bugle-call:

"I will not say otherwise than I have said al-
ready; and if I saw the fire before me I would say
it again!"

It was uplifting to hear her battle-voice once more
and see the battle-light burn in her eye. Many
there were stirred; every man that was a man was
stirred, whether friend or foe; and Manchon risked
his life again, good soul, for he wrote in the margin
of the record in good plain letters these brave
words: "Superba responsio!" and there they have

---

remained these sixty years, and there you may read
them to this day.

"Superba responsio!" Yes, it was just that.
For this "superb answer" came from the lips of a
girl of nineteen with death and hell staring her in
the face.

Of course, the matter of the male attire was gone
over again; and as usual at wearisome length; also,
as usual, the customary bribe was offered: if she
would discard that dress voluntarily they would let
her hear mass. But she answered as she had often
answered before:

"I will go in a woman's robe to all services of
the church if I may be permitted, but I will resume
the other dress when I return to my cell."

They set several traps for her in a tentative form;
that is to say, they placed supposititious propositions
before her and cunningly tried to commit her to one
end of the propositions without committing them-
selves to the other. But she always saw the game
and spoiled it. The trap was in this form:

"Would you be willing to do so and so if we
should give you leave?"

Her answer was always in this form or to this
effect:

"When you give me leave, then you will know."

Yes, Joan was at her best that second of May.
She had all her wits about her, and they could not
catch her anywhere. It was a long, long session,
and all the old ground was fought over again, foot

---

by foot, and the orator-expert worked all his per-
suasions, all his eloquence; but the result was the
familiar one—a drawn battle, the sixty-two retiring
upon their base, the solitary enemy holding her
original position within her original lines.

---

CHAPTER XVI.

The brilliant weather, the heavenly weather, the
bewitching weather made everybody's heart to
sing, as I have told you; yes, Rouen was feeling
light-hearted and gay, and most willing and ready
to break out and laugh upon the least occasion; and
so when the news went around that the young girl in
the tower had scored another defeat against Bishop
Cauchon there was abundant laughter—abundant
laughter among the citizens of both parties, for they
all hated the Bishop. It is true, the English-
hearted majority of the people wanted Joan burned,
but that did not keep them from laughing at the
man they hated. It would have been perilous for
anybody to laugh at the English chiefs or at the
majority of Cauchon's assistant judges, but to laugh
at Cauchon or D'Estivet and Loyseleur was safe—
nobody would report it.

The difference between Cauchon and cochon*

Hog, pig.

was
not noticeable in speech, and so there was plenty of
opportunity for puns; the opportunities were not
thrown away.

---

Some of the jokes got well worn in the course of
two or three months, from repeated use; for every
time Cauchon started a new trial the folk said "The
sow has littered*

Cochonner, to litter, to farrow; also, "to make a mess of!"

again"; and every time the trial
failed they said it over again, with its other mean-
ing, "The hog has made a mess of it."

And so, on the third of May, Noël and I, drifting
about the town, heard many a wide-mouthed lout
let go his joke and his laugh, and then move to the
next group, proud of his wit and happy, to work it
off again:

"'Ods blood, the sow has littered five times, and
five times has made a mess of it!"

And now and then one was bold enough to say—
but he said it softly:

"Sixty-three and the might of England against a
girl, and she camps on the field five times!"

Cauchon lived in the great palace of the Arch-
bishop, and it was guarded by English soldiery;
but no matter, there was never a dark night but the
walls showed next morning that the rude joker had
been there with his paint and brush. Yes, he had
been there, and had smeared the sacred walls with
pictures of hogs in all attitudes except flattering
ones; hogs clothed in a Bishop's vestments and
wearing a Bishop's mitre irreverently cocked on the
side of their heads.

Cauchon raged and cursed over his defeats and his
impotence during seven days, then he conceived a

---

new scheme. You shall see what it was; for you
have not cruel hearts, and you would never guess it.

On the ninth of May there was a summons, and
Manchon and I got our materials together and
started. But this time we were to go to one of the
other towers—not the one which was Joan's prison.
It was round and grim and massive, and built of the
plainest and thickest and solidest masonry—a dismal
and forbidding structure.*

The lower half of it remains to-day just as it was then; the upper
half is of a later date.—Translator.

We entered the circular room on the ground floor,
and I saw what turned me sick—the instruments of
torture and the executioners standing ready! Here
you have the black heart of Cauchon at the blackest,
here you have the proof that in his nature there was
no such thing as pity. One wonders if he ever
knew his mother or ever had a sister.

Cauchon was there, and the Vice-Inquisitor and
the Abbot of St. Corneille; also six others, among
them that false Loyseleur. The guards were in their
places, the rack was there, and by it stood the exe-
cutioner and his aids in their crimson hose and
doublets, meet color for their bloody trade. The
picture of Joan rose before me stretched upon the
rack, her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to the
other, and those red giants turning the windlass and
pulling her limbs out of their sockets. It seemed to
me that I could hear the bones snap and the flesh
tear apart, and I did not see how that body of

---

anointed servants of the merciful Jesus could sit
there and look so placid and indifferent.

After a little, Joan arrived and was brought in.
She saw the rack, she saw the attendants, and the
same picture which I had been seeing must have
risen in her mind; but do you think she quailed,
do you think she shuddered? No, there was no
sign of that sort. She straightened herself up, and
there was a slight curl of scorn about her lip; but
as for fear, she showed not a vestige of it.

This was a memorable session, but it was the
shortest one of all the list. When Joan had taken
her seat a résumé of her "crimes" was read to
her. Then Cauchon made a solemn speech. In
it he said that in the course of her several trials
Joan had refused to answer some of the questions
and had answered others with lies, but that now he
was going to have the truth out of her, and the
whole of it.

His manner was full of confidence this time; he
was sure he had found a way at last to break this
child's stubborn spirit and make her beg and cry.
He would score a victory this time and stop the
mouths of the jokers of Rouen. You see, he was
only just a man after all, and couldn't stand ridicule
any better than other people. He talked high, and
his splotchy face lighted itself up with all the shift-
ing tints and signs of evil pleasure and promised
triumph—purple, yellow, red, green—they were
all there, with sometimes the dull and spongy blue

---

of a drowned man, the uncanniest of them all. And
finally he burst out in a great passion and said:

"There is the rack, and there are its ministers!
You will reveal all now or be put to the torture.
Speak."

Then she made that great answer which will live
forever; made it without fuss or bravado, and yet
how fine and noble was the sound of it:

"I will tell you nothing more than I have told
you; no, not even if you tear the limbs from my
body. And even if in my pain I did say something
other wise, I would always say afterwards that it
was the torture that spoke and not I."

There was no crushing that spirit. You should
have seen Cauchon. Defeated again, and he had
not dreamed of such a thing. I heard it said next
day, around the town, that he had a full confession,
all written out, in his pocket and all ready for Joan
to sign. I do not know that that was true, but it
probably was, for her mark signed at the bottom of
a confession would be the kind of evidence (for
effect with the public) which Cauchon and his
people would particularly value, you know.

No, there was no crushing that spirit, and no
beclouding that clear mind. Consider the depth, the
wisdom of that answer, coming from an ignorant
girl. Why, there were not six men in the world
who had ever reflected that words forced out of a
person by horrible tortures were not necessarily
words of verity and truth, yet this unlettered

---

peasant girl put her finger upon that flaw with an
unerring instinct. I had always supposed that tor-
ture brought out the truth—everybody supposed
it; and when Joan came out with those simple
common-sense words they seemed to flood the place
with light. It was like a lightning-flash at midnight
which suddenly reveals a fair valley sprinkled over
with silver streams and gleaming villages and farm-
steads where was only an impenetrable world of dark-
ness before. Manchon stole a sidewise look at me,
and his face was full of surprise; and there was the
like to be seen in other faces there. Consider—they
were old, and deeply cultured, yet here was a village
maid able to teach them something which they had
not known before. I heard one of them mutter:

"Verily it is a wonderful creature. She has laid
her hand upon an accepted truth that is as old as the
world, and it has crumbled to dust and rubbish under
her touch. Now whence got she that marvelous
insight?"

The judges laid their heads together and began to
talk low. It was plain, from chance words which
one caught now and then, that Cauchon and Loyse-
leur were insisting upon the application of the tor-
ture, and that most of the others were urgently
objecting.

Finally Cauchon broke out with a good deal of
asperity in his voice and ordered Joan back to her
dungeon. That was a happy surprise for me. I
was not expecting that the Bishop would yield.

---

When Manchon came home that night he said he
had found out why the torture was not applied.
There were two reasons. One was, a fear that Joan
might die under the torture, which would not suit
the English at all; the other was, that the torture
would effect nothing if Joan was going to take back
everything she said under its pains; and as to put-
ting her mark to a confession, it was believed that
not even the rack could ever make her do that.

So all Rouen laughed again, and kept it up for
three days, saying:

"The sow has littered six times, and made six
messes of it."

And the palace walls got a new decoration—a
mitred hog carrying a discarded rack home on its
shoulder, and Loyseleur weeping in its wake. Many
rewards were offered for the capture of these
painters, but nobody applied. Even the English
guard feigned blindness and would not see the artists
at work.

The Bishop's anger was very high now. He could
not reconcile himself to the idea of giving up the
torture. It was the pleasantest idea he had invented
yet, and he would not cast it by. So he called in
some of his satellites on the twelfth, and urged the
torture again. But it was a failure. With some,
Joan's speech had wrought an effect; others feared
she might die under the torture; others did not be-
lieve that any amount of suffering could make her
put her mark to a lying confession. There were

---

fourteen men present, including the Bishop. Eleven
of them voted dead against the torture, and stood
their ground in spite of Cauchon's abuse. Two
voted with the Bishop and insisted upon the torture.
These two were Loyseleur and the orator—the man
whom Joan had bidden to "read his book"—
Thomas de Courcelles, the renowned pleader, and
master of eloquence.

Age has taught me charity of speech; but it fails
me when I think of those three names—Cauchon,
Courcelles, Loyseleur.

---

CHAPTER XVII.

Another ten days' wait. The great theologians
of that treasury of all valuable knowledge and
all wisdom, the University of Paris, were still weigh-
ing and considering and discussing the Twelve Lies.

I had but little to do these ten days, so I spent
them mainly in walks about the town with Noël.
But there was no pleasure in them, our spirits being
so burdened with cares, and the outlook for Joan
growing so steadily darker and darker all the time.
And then we naturally contrasted our circumstances
with hers: this freedom and sunshine, with her dark-
ness and chains; our comradeship, with her lonely
estate; our alleviations of one sort and another, with
her destitution in all. She was used to liberty, but
now she had none; she was an out-of-door creature
by nature and habit, but now she was shut up day
and night in a steel cage like an animal; she was
used to the light, but now she was always in a
gloom where all objects about her were dim and
spectral; she was used to the thousand various
sounds which are the cheer and music of a busy
life, but now she heard only the monotonous foot-

---

fall of the sentry pacing his watch; she had been
fond of talking with her mates, but now there was
no one to talk to; she had had an easy laugh, but it
was gone dumb now; she had been born for com-
radeship, and blithe and busy work, and all manner
of joyous activities, but here were only dreariness,
and leaden hours, and weary inaction, and brooding
stillness, and thoughts that travel day and night and
night and day round and round in the same circle,
and wear the brain and break the heart with weari-
ness. It was death in life; yes, death in life, that
is what it must have been. And there was another
hard thing about it all. A young girl in trouble
needs the soothing solace and support and sym-
pathy of persons of her own sex, and the delicate
offices and gentle ministries which only these can
furnish; yet in all these months of gloomy cap-
tivity in her dungeon Joan never saw the face of
a girl or a woman. Think how her heart would
have leaped to see such a face.

Consider. If you would realize how great Joan
of Arc was, remember that it was out of such a
place and such circumstances that she came week
after week and month after month and confronted
the master intellects of France single-handed, and
baffled their cunningest schemes, defeated their
ablest plans, detected and avoided their secretest
traps and pitfalls, broke their lines, repelled their
assaults, and camped on the field after every en-
gagement; steadfast always, true to her faith and

---

her ideals; defying torture, defying the stake, and
answering threats of eternal death and the pains of
hell with a simple "Let come what may, here I take
my stand and will abide."

Yes, if you would realize how great was the soul,
how profound the wisdom, and how luminous the
intellect of Joan of Arc, you must study her there,
where she fought out that long fight all alone—and
not merely against the subtlest brains and deepest
learning of France, but against the ignoblest deceits,
the meanest treacheries, and the hardest hearts to
be found in any land, pagan or Christian.

She was great in battle—we all know that; great
in foresight; great in loyalty and patriotism; great
in persuading discontented chiefs and reconciling
conflicting interests and passions; great in the ability
to discover merit and genius wherever it lay hidden;
great in picturesque and eloquent speech; supremely
great in the gift of firing the hearts of hopeless men
with noble enthusiasms, the gift of turning hares into
heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march
to death with songs upon their lips. But all these
are exalting activities; they keep hand and heart
and brain keyed up to their work: there is the joy
of achievement, the inspiration of stir and move-
ment, the applause which hails success; the soul is
overflowing with life and energy, the faculties are at
white heat; weariness, despondency, inertia—these
do not exist.

Yes, Joan of Arc was great always, great every-

---

where, but she was greatest in the Rouen trials.
There she rose above the limitations and infirmities
of our human nature, and accomplished under
blighting and unnerving and hopeless conditions all
that her splendid equipment of moral and intellectual
forces could have accomplished if they had been
supplemented by the mighty helps of hope and
cheer and light, the presence of friendly faces, and
a fair and equal fight, with the great world looking
on and wondering.

---

CHAPTER XVIII.

Toward the end of the ten-day interval the
University of Paris rendered its decision con-
cerning the Twelve Articles. By this finding, Joan
was guilty upon all the counts: she must renounce
her errors and make satisfaction, or be abandoned
to the secular arm for punishment.

The University's mind was probably already made
up before the Articles were laid before it; yet it
took it from the fifth to the eighteenth to produce
its verdict. I think the delay may have been caused
by temporary difficulties concerning two points:

1, As to who the fiends were who were repre-
sented in Joan's Voices;

2, As to whether her saints spoke French only.

You understand, the University decided emphatic-
ally that it was fiends who spoke in those Voices;
it would need to prove that, and it did. It found
out who the fiends were, and named them in the
verdict: Belial, Satan, and Behemoth. This has
always seemed a doubtful thing to me, and not en-
titled to much credit. I think so for this reason:
if the University had actually known it was those
three, it would for very consistency's sake have told

---

how it knew it, and not stopped with the mere
assertion, since it had made Joan explain how she
knew they were not fiends. Does not that seem
reasonable? To my mind the University's position
was weak, and I will tell you why. It had claimed
that Joan's angels were devils in disguise, and we
all know that devils do disguise themselves as angels;
up to that point the University's position was
strong; but you see yourself that it eats it own
argument when it turns around and pretends that it
can tell who such apparitions are, while denying the
like ability to a person with as good a head on her
shoulders as the best one the University could
produce.

The doctors of the University had to see those
creatures in order to know; and if Joan was de-
ceived, it is argument that they in their turn could
also be deceived, for their insight and judgment
were surely not clearer than hers.

As to the other point which I have thought may
have proved a difficulty and cost the University
delay, I will touch but a moment upon that, and
pass on. The University decided that it was blas-
phemy for Joan to say that her saints spoke French
and not English, and were on the French side in
political sympathies. I think that the thing which
troubled the doctors of theology was this: they had
decided that the three Voices were Satan and two
other devils; but they had also decided that these
Voices were not on the French side—thereby tacitly

---

asserting that they were on the English side; and if
on the English side, then they must be angels and
not devils. Otherwise, the situation was embarrass-
ing. You see, the University being the wisest and
deepest and most erudite body in the world, it would
like to be logical if it could, for the sake of its repu-
tation; therefore it would study and study, days
and days, trying to find some good common-sense
reason for proving the Voices devils in Article No.
1 and proving them angels in Article No. 10.
However, they had to give it up. They found no
way out; and so, to this day, the University's ver-
dict remains just so—devils in No. 1, angels in No.
10; and no way to reconcile the discrepancy.

The envoys brought the verdict to Rouen, and
with it a letter for Cauchon which was full of fervid
praise. The University complimented him on his
zeal in hunting down this woman "whose venom
had infected the faithful of the whole West," and
as recompense it as good as promised him "a
crown of imperishable glory in heaven." Only that!
—a crown in heaven; a promissory note and no
indorser; always something away off yonder; not a
word about the Archbishopric of Rouen, which was
the thing Cauchon was destroying his soul for. A
crown in heaven; it must have sounded like a sar-
casm to him, after all his hard work. What should
he do in heaven? he did not know anybody there.

On the nineteenth of May a court of fifty judges
sat in the archiepiscopal palace to discuss Joan's

---

fate. A few wanted her delivered over to the secular
arm at once for punishment, but the rest insisted
that she be once more "charitably admonished"
first.

So the same court met in the castle on the twenty-
third, and Joan was brought to the bar. Pierre
Maurice, a canon of Rouen, made a speech to Joan
in which he admonished her to save her life and her
soul by renouncing her errors and surrendering to
the Church. He finished with a stern threat: if
she remained obstinate the damnation of her soul
was certain, the destruction of her body probable.
But Joan was immovable. She said:

"If I were under sentence, and saw the fire be-
fore me, and the executioner ready to light it—
more, if I were in the fire itself, I would say none
but the things which I have said in these trials; and
I would abide by them till I died."

A deep silence followed now, which endured some
moments. It lay upon me like a weight. I knew it
for an omen. Then Cauchon, grave and solemn,
turned to Pierre Maurice:

"Have you anything further to say?"

The priest bowed low, and said:

"Nothing, my lord."

"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything further
to say?"

"Nothing."

"Then the debate is closed. To-morrow, sen-
tence will be pronounced. Remove the prisoner."

---

She seemed to go from the place erect and noble.
But I do not know; my sight was dim with tears.

To-morrow—twenty-fourth of May! Exactly a
year since I saw her go speeding across the plain at
the head of her troops, her silver helmet shining,
her silvery cape fluttering in the wind, her white
plumes flowing, her sword held aloft; saw her
charge the Burgundian camp three times, and carry
it; saw her wheel to the right and spur for the
duke's reserves; saw her fling herself against it in
the last assault she was ever to make. And now
that fatal day was come again—and see what it was
bringing!

---

CHAPTER XIX.

Joan had been adjudged guilty of heresy, sor-
cery, and all the other terrible crimes set forth
in the Twelve Articles, and her life was in Cauchon's
hands at last. He could send her to the stake at
once. His work was finished now, you think? He
was satisfied? Not at all. What would his Arch-
bishopric be worth if the people should get the idea
into their heads that this faction of interested priests,
slaving under the English lash, had wrongly con-
demned and burned Joan of Arc, Deliverer of
France? That would be to make of her a holy
martyr. Then her spirit would rise from her body's
ashes, a thousand-fold re-enforced, and sweep the
English domination into the sea, and Cauchon along
with it. No, the victory was not complete yet.
Joan's guilt must be established by evidence which
would satisfy the people. Where was that evidence
to be found? There was only one person in the
world who could furnish it—Joan of Arc herself.
She must condemn herself, and in public—at least
she must seem to do it.

But how was this to be managed? Weeks had

---

been spent already in trying to get her to surrender
—time wholly wasted; what was to persuade her
now? Torture had been threatened, the fire had
been threatened; what was left? Illness, deadly
fatigue, and the sight of the fire, the presence of the
fire! That was left.

Now that was a shrewd thought. She was but a
girl after all, and, under illness and exhaustion, sub-
ject to a girl's weaknesses.

Yes, it was shrewdly thought. She had tacitly
said herself that under the bitter pains of the rack
they would be able to extort a false confession from
her. It was a hint worth remembering, and it was
remembered.

She had furnished another hint at the same time:
that as soon as the pains were gone, she would re-
tract the confession. That hint was also remem-
bered.

She had herself taught them what to do, you see.
First, they must wear out her strength, then frighten
her with the fire. Second, while the fright was on
her, she must be made to sign a paper.

But she would demand a reading of the paper.
They could not venture to refuse this, with the
public there to hear. Suppose that during the read-
ing her courage should return? she would refuse to
sign then. Very well, even that difficulty could be
got over. They could read a short paper of no im-
portance, then slip a long and deadly one into its
place and trick her into signing that.

---

Yet there was still one other difficulty. If they
made her seem to abjure, that would free her from
the death penalty. They could keep her in a prison
of the Church, but they could not kill her. That
would not answer; for only her death would content
the English. Alive she was a terror, in a prison or
out of it. She had escaped from two prisons
already.

But even that difficulty could be managed. Cau-
chon would make promises to her; in return she
would promise to leave off the male dress. He
would violate his promises, and that would so situate
her that she would not be able to keep hers. Her
lapse would condemn her to the stake, and the stake
would be ready.

These were the several moves; there was nothing
to do but to make them, each in its order, and the
game was won. One might almost name the day
that the betrayed girl, the most innocent creature in
France and the noblest, would go to her pitiful
death.

And the time was favorable—cruelly favorable.
Joan's spirit had as yet suffered no decay, it was as
sublime and masterful as ever; but her body's forces
had been steadily wasting away in those last ten
days, and a strong mind needs a healthy body for
its rightful support.

The world knows now that Cauchon's plan was as
I have sketched it to you, but the world did not
know it at that time. There are sufficient indica-

---

tions that Warwick and all the other English chiefs
except the highest one—the Cardinal of Winchester
—were not let into the secret; also, that only
Loyseleur and Beaupere, on the French side, knew
the scheme. Sometimes I have doubted if even
Loyseleur and Beaupere knew the whole of it at
first. However, if any did, it was these two.

It is usual to let the condemned pass their last
night of life in peace, but this grace was denied to
poor Joan, if one may credit the rumors of the
time. Loyseleur was smuggled into her presence,
and in the character of priest, friend, and secret
partisan of France and hater of England, he spent
some hours in beseeching her to do "the only right
and righteous thing"—submit to the Church, as a
good Christian should; and that then she would
straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded
English and be transferred to the Church's prison,
where she would be honorably used and have women
about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her.
He knew how odious to her was the presence of her
rough and profane English guards; he knew that
her Voices had vaguely promised something which
she interpreted to be escape, rescue, release of some
sort, and the chance to burst upon France once
more and victoriously complete the great work which
she had been commissioned of Heaven to do. Also
there was that other thing: if her failing body could
be further weakened by loss of rest and sleep now,
her tired mind would be dazed and drowsy on the

---

morrow, and in ill condition to stand out against
persuasions, threats, and the sight of the stake, and
also be purblind to traps and snares which it would
be swift to detect when in its normal estate.

I do not need to tell you that there was no rest
for me that night. Nor for Noël. We went to the
main gate of the city before nightfall, with a hope
in our minds, based upon that vague prophecy of
Joan's Voices which seemed to promise a rescue by
force at the last moment. The immense news had
flown swiftly far and wide that at last Joan of Arc
was condemned, and would be sentenced and burned
alive on the morrow; and so crowds of people were
flowing in at the gate, and other crowds were being
refused admission by the soldiery; these being peo-
ple who brought doubtful passes or none at all. We
scanned these crowds eagerly, but there was nothing
about them to indicate that they were our old war-
comrades in disguise, and certainly there were no
familiar faces among them. And so, when the gate
was closed at last, we turned away grieved, and
more disappointed than we cared to admit, either in
speech or thought.

The streets were surging tides of excited men. It
was difficult to make one's way. Toward midnight
our aimless tramp brought us to the neighborhood
of the beautiful church of St. Ouen, and there all
was bustle and work. The square was a wilderness
of torches and people; and through a guarded
passage dividing the pack, laborers were carrying

---

planks and timbers and disappearing with them
through the gate of the churchyard. We asked
what was going forward; the answer was:

"Scaffolds and the stake. Don't you know that
the French witch is to be burned in the morning?"

Then we went away. We had no heart for that
place.

At dawn we were at the city gate again; this time
with a hope which our wearied bodies and fevered
minds magnified into a large probability. We had
heard a report that the Abbot of Jumièges with all
his monks was coming to witness the burning. Our
desire, abetted by our imagination, turned those
nine hundred monks into Joan's old campaigners,
and their Abbot into La Hire or the Bastard or
D'Alençon; and we watched them file in, unchal-
lenged, the multitude respectfully dividing and un-
covering while they passed, with our hearts in our
throats and our eyes swimming with tears of joy and
pride and exultation; and we tried to catch glimpses
of the faces under the cowls, and were prepared to
give signal to any recognized face that we were
Joan's men and ready and eager to kill and be killed
in the good cause. How foolish we were; but we
were young, you know, and youth hopeth all things,
believeth all things.

---

CHAPTER XX.

In the morning I was at my official post. It was
on a platform raised the height of a man, in the
churchyard, under the eaves of St. Ouen. On this
same platform was a crowd of priests and important
citizens, and several lawyers. Abreast it, with a
small space between, was another and larger plat-
form, handsomely canopied against sun and rain,
and richly carpeted; also it was furnished with
comfortable chairs, and with two which were more
sumptuous than the others, and raised above the
general level. One of these two was occupied by a
prince of the royal blood of England, his Eminence
the Cardinal of Winchester; the other by Cauchon,
Bishop of Beauvais. In the rest of the chairs sat
three bishops, the Vice-Inquisitor, eight abbots, and
the sixty-two friars and lawyers who had sat as
Joan's judges in her late trials.

Twenty steps in front of the platforms was an-
other—a table-topped pyramid of stone, built up in
retreating courses, thus forming steps. Out of this
rose that grisly thing, the stake; about the stake
bundles of fagots and firewood were piled. On the

---

ground at the base of the pyramid stood three crim-
son figures, the executioner and his assistants. At
their feet lay what had been a goodly heap of
brands, but was now a smokeless nest of ruddy
coals; a foot or two from this was a supplemental
supply of wood and fagots compacted into a pile
shoulder-high and containing as much as six pack-
horse loads. Think of that. We seem so delicately
made, so destructible, so insubstantial; yet it is
easier to reduce a granite statue to ashes than it is
to do that with a man's body.

The sight of the stake sent physical pains tingling
down the nerves of my body; and yet, turn as I
would, my eyes would keep coming back to it, such
fascination has the grewsome and the terrible for us.

The space occupied by the platforms and the
stake was kept open by a wall of English soldiery,
standing elbow to elbow, erect and stalwart figures,
fine and sightly in their polished steel; while from
behind them on every hand stretched far away a
level plain of human heads; and there was no win-
dow and no housetop within our view, howsoever
distant, but was black with patches and masses of
people.

But there was no noise, no stir; it was as if the
world was dead. The impressiveness of this silence
and solemnity was deepened by a leaden twilight,
for the sky was hidden by a pall of low-hanging
storm-clouds; and above the remote horizon faint
winkings of heat-lightning played, and now and then

---

one caught the dull mutterings and complainings of
distant thunder.

At last the stillness was broken. From beyond
the square rose an indistinct sound, but familiar—
curt, crisp phrases of command; next I saw the
plain of heads dividing, and the steady swing of a
marching host was glimpsed between. My heart
leaped for a moment. Was it La Hire and his
hellions? No—that was not their gait. No, it
was the prisoner and her escort; it was Joan of
Arc, under guard, that was coming; my spirits sank
as low as they had been before. Weak as she was
they made her walk; they would increase her weak-
ness all they could. The distance was not great—
it was but a few hundred yards—but short as it was
it was a heavy tax upon one who had been lying
chained in one spot for months, and whose feet had
lost their powers from inaction. Yes, and for a year
Joan had known only the cool damps of a dungeon,
and now she was dragging herself through this sultry
summer heat, this airless and suffocating void. As
she entered the gate, drooping with exhaustion, there
was that creature Loyseleur at her side with his head
bent to her ear. We knew afterward that he had
been with her again this morning in the prison
wearying her with his persuasions and enticing her
with false promises, and that he was now still at the
same work at the gate, imploring her to yield every-
thing that would be required of her, and assuring
her that if she would do this all would be well with

---

her: she would be rid of the dreaded English and
find safety in the powerful shelter and protection of
the Church. A miserable man, a stony-hearted man!

The moment Joan was seated on the platform she
closed her eyes and allowed her chin to fall; and so
sat, with her hands nestling in her lap, indifferent to
everything, caring for nothing but rest. And she
was so white again—white as alabaster.

How the faces of that packed mass of humanity
lighted up with interest, and with what intensity all
eyes gazed upon this fragile girl! And how natural
it was; for these people realized that at last they
were looking upon that person whom they had so
long hungered to see; a person whose name and
fame filled all Europe, and made all other names
and all other renowns insignificant by comparison:
Joan of Arc, the wonder of the time, and destined
to be the wonder of all times! And I could read as
by print, in their marveling countenances, the words
that were drifting through their minds: "Can it be
true; is it believable, that it is this little creature,
this girl, this child with the good face, the sweet
face, the beautiful face, the dear and bonny face,
that has carried fortresses by storm, charged at the
head of victorious armies, blown the might of Eng-
land out of her path with a breath, and fought a
long campaign, solitary and alone, against the
massed brains and learning of France—and had
won it if the fight had been fair!"

Evidently Cauchon had grown afraid of Manchon

---

because of his pretty apparent leanings toward Joan,
for another recorder was in the chief place here,
which left my master and me nothing to do but sit
idle and look on.

Well, I supposed that everything had been done
which could be thought of to tire Joan's body and
mind, but it was a mistake; one more device had
been invented. This was to preach a long sermon
to her in that oppressive heat.

When the preacher began, she cast up one dis-
tressed and disappointed look, then dropped her
head again. This preacher was Guillaume Erard,
an oratorical celebrity. He got his text from the
Twelve Lies. He emptied upon Joan all the calum-
nies in detail that had been bottled up in that mess
of venom, and called her all the brutal names that
the Twelve were labeled with, working himself into
a whirlwind of fury as he went on; but his labors
were wasted, she seemed lost in dreams, she made
no sign, she did not seem to hear. At last he
launched this apostrophe:

"O France, how hast thou been abused! Thou
hast always been the home of Christianity; but now,
Charles, who calls himself thy King and governor,
indorses, like the heretic and schismatic that he is,
the words and deeds of a worthless and infamous
woman!" Joan raised her head, and her eyes began
to burn and flash. The preacher turned toward
her: "It is to you, Joan, that I speak, and I tell
you that your King is schismatic and a heretic!"

---

Ah, he might abuse her to his heart's content;
she could endure that; but to her dying moment
she could never hear in patience a word against that
ingrate, that treacherous dog our King, whose
proper place was here, at this moment, sword in
hand, routing these reptiles and saving this most
noble servant that ever King had in this world—and
he would have been there if he had not been what I
have called him. Joan's loyal soul was outraged,
and she turned upon the preacher and flung out a
few words with a spirit which the crowd recognized
as being in accordance with the Joan of Arc tradi-
tions:

"By my faith, sir! I make bold to say and
swear, on pain of death, that he is the most noble
Christian of all Christians, and the best lover of the
faith and the Church!"

There was an explosion of applause from the
crowd—which angered the preacher, for he had
been aching long to hear an expression like this, and
now that it was come at last it had fallen to the
wrong person: he had done all the work; the other
had carried off all the spoil. He stamped his foot
and shouted to the sheriff:

"Make her shut up!"

That made the crowd laugh.

A mob has small respect for a grown man who
has to call on a sheriff to protect him from a sick
girl.

Joan had damaged the preacher's cause more with

---

one sentence than he had helped it with a hundred;
so he was much put out, and had trouble to get a
good start again. But he needn't have bothered;
there was no occasion. It was mainly an English-
feeling mob. It had but obeyed a law of our nature
—an irresistible law—to enjoy and applaud a
spirited and promptly delivered retort, no matter
who makes it. The mob was with the preacher; it
had been beguiled for a moment, but only that; it
would soon return. It was there to see this girl
burnt; so that it got that satisfaction—without
too much delay—it would be content.

Presently the preacher formally summoned Joan
to submit to the Church. He made the demand
with confidence, for he had gotten the idea from
Loyseleur and Beaupere that she was worn to the
bone, exhausted, and would not be able to put forth
any more resistance; and, indeed, to look at her it
seemed that they must be right. Nevertheless, she
made one more effort to hold her ground, and said,
wearily:

"As to that matter, I have answered my judges
before. I have told them to report all that I have
said and done to our holy Father the Pope—to
whom, and to God first, I appeal."

Again, out of her native wisdom, she had brought
those words of tremendous import, but was ignorant
of their value. But they could have availed her
nothing in any case now, with the stake there and
these thousands of enemies about her. Yet they

---

made every churchman there blench, and the
preacher changed the subject with all haste. Well
might those criminals blench, for Joan's appeal of
her case to the Pope stripped Cauchon at once of
jurisdiction over it, and annulled all that he and his
judges had already done in the matter and all that
they should do in it thenceforth.

Joan went on presently to reiterate, after some
further talk, that she had acted by command of God
in her deeds and utterances; then, when an attempt
was made to implicate the King, and friends of hers
and his, she stopped that. She said:

"I charge my deeds and words upon no one,
neither upon my King nor any other. If there is
any fault in them, I am responsible and no other."

She was asked if she would not recant those of
her words and deeds which had been pronounced
evil by her judges. Her answer made confusion and
damage again:

"I submit them to God and the Pope."

The Pope once more! It was very embarrassing.
Here was a person who was asked to submit her
case to the Church, and who frankly consents—
offers to submit it to the very head of it. What
more could any one require? How was one to
answer such a formidably unanswerable answer as
that?

The worried judges put their heads together and
whispered and planned and discussed. Then they
brought forth this sufficiently shambling conclusion

---

—but it was the best they could do, in so close a
place: they said the Pope was so far away; and it
was not necessary to go to him anyway, because
these present judges had sufficient power and au-
thority to deal with the present case, and were in
effect "the Church" to that extent. At another
time they could have smiled at this conceit, but not
now; they were not comfortable enough now.

The mob was getting impatient. It was beginning
to put on a threatening aspect; it was tired of stand-
ing, tired of the scorching heat; and the thunder
was coming nearer, the lightning was flashing
brighter. It was necessary to hurry this matter to
a close. Erard showed Joan a written form, which
had been prepared and made all ready beforehand,
and asked her to abjure.

"Abjure? What is abjure?"

She did not know the word. It was explained to
her by Massieu. She tried to understand, but she
was breaking, under exhaustion, and she could
not gather the meaning. It was all a jumble and
confusion of strange words. In her despair she sent
out this beseeching cry:

"I appeal to the Church universal whether I
ought to abjure or no!"

Erard exclaimed:

"You shall abjure instantly, or instantly be
burnt!"

She glanced up, at those awful words, and for the
first time she saw the stake and the mass of red

---

coals—redder and angrier than ever now under the
constantly deepening storm-gloom. She gasped and
staggered up out of her seat muttering and mum-
bling incoherently, and gazed vacantly upon the
people and the scene about her like one who is
dazed, or thinks he dreams, and does not know
where he is.

The priests crowded about her imploring her to
sign the paper, there were many voices beseeching
and urging her at once, there was great turmoil and
shouting and excitement among the populace and
everywhere.

"Sign! sign!" from the priests; "sign—sign
and be saved!" And Loyseleur was urging at her
ear, "Do as I told you—do not destroy yourself!"

Joan said plaintively to these people:

"Ah, you do not do well to seduce me."

The judges joined their voices to the others. Yes,
even the iron in their hearts melted, and they said:

"O Joan, we pity you so! Take back what
you have said, or we must deliver you up to punish-
ment."

And now there was another voice—it was from
the other platform—pealing solemnly above the
din: Cauchon's—reading the sentence of death!

Joan's strength was all spent. She stood looking
about her in a bewildered way a moment, then
slowly she sank to her knees, and bowed her head
and said:

"I submit."

---

They gave her no time to reconsider—they knew
the peril of that. The moment the words were out
of her mouth Massieu was reading to her the abjura-
tion, and she was repeating the words after him
mechanically, unconsciously—and smiling; for her
wandering mind was far away in some happier
world.

Then this short paper of six lines was slipped
aside and a long one of many pages was smuggled
into its place, and she, noting nothing, put her mark
to it, saying, in pathetic apology, that she did not
know how to write. But a secretary of the King of
England was there to take care of that defect; he
guided her hand with his own, and wrote her name
—Jehanne.

The great crime was accomplished. She had
signed—what? She did not know—but the others
knew. She had signed a paper confessing herself a
sorceress, a dealer with devils, a liar, a blasphemer
of God and His angels, a lover of blood, a promoter
of sedition, cruel, wicked, commissioned of Satan;
and this signature of her bound her to resume the
dress of a woman. There were other promises, but
that one would answer, without the others; that one
could be made to destroy her.

Loyseleur pressed forward and praised her for
having done "such a good day's work."

But she was still dreamy, she hardly heard.

Then Cauchon pronounced the words which dis-
solved the excommunication and restored her to her

---

beloved Church, with all the dear privileges of wor-
ship. Ah, she heard that! You could see it in the
deep gratitude that rose in her face and transfigured
it with joy.

But how transient was that happiness! For
Cauchon, without a tremor of pity in his voice,
added these crushing words:

"And that she may repent of her crimes and re-
peat them no more, she is sentenced to perpetual
imprisonment, with the bread of affliction and the
water of anguish!"

Perpetual imprisonment! She had never dreamed
of that—such a thing had never been hinted to her
by Loyseleur or by any other. Loyseleur had dis-
tinctly said and promised that "all would be well
with her." And the very last words spoken to her
by Erard, on that very platform, when he was urg-
ing her to abjure, was a straight, unqualified promise
—that if she would do it she should go free from
captivity.

She stood stunned and speechless a moment;
then she remembered, with such solacement as the
thought could furnish, that by another clear promise
—a promise made by Cauchon himself—she would
at least be the Church's captive, and have women
about her in place of a brutal foreign soldiery. So
she turned to the body of priests and said, with a sad
resignation:

"Now, you men of the Church, take me to your
prison, and leave me no longer in the hands of the

---

English;" and she gathered up her chains and pre-
pared to move.

But alas! now came these shameful words from
Cauchon—and with them a mocking laugh:

"Take her to the prison whence she came!"

Poor abused girl! She stood dumb, smitten,
paralyzed. It was pitiful to see. She had been
beguiled, lied to, betrayed; she saw it all now.

The rumbling of a drum broke upon the stillness,
and for just one moment she thought of the glorious
deliverance promised by her Voices—I read it in
the rapture that lit her face; then she saw what it
was—her prison escort—and that light faded,
never to revive again. And now her head began a
piteous rocking motion, swaying slowly, this way
and that, as is the way when one is suffering un-
wordable pain, or when one's heart is broken; then
drearily she went from us, with her face in her
hands, and sobbing bitterly.

---

CHAPTER XXI.

There is no certainty that any one in all Rouen
was in the secret of the deep game which
Cauchon was playing except the Cardinal of Win-
chester. Then you can imagine the astonishment
and stupefaction of that vast mob gathered there and
those crowds of churchmen assembled on the two
platforms, when they saw Joan of Arc moving away,
alive and whole—slipping out of their grip at last,
after all this tedious waiting, all this tantalizing ex-
pectancy.

Nobody was able to stir or speak for a while, so
paralyzing was the universal astonishment, so unbe-
lievable the fact that the stake was actually standing
there unoccupied and its prey gone. Then sud-
denly everybody broke into a fury of rage; maledic-
tions and charges of treachery began to fly freely;
yes, and even stones: a stone came near killing the
Cardinal of Winchester—it just missed his head.
But the man who threw it was not to blame, for he
was excited, and a person who is excited never can
throw straight.

The tumult was very great, indeed, for a while.

---

In the midst of it a chaplain of the Cardinal even
forgot the proprieties so far as to opprobriously
assail the august Bishop of Beauvais himself, shaking
his fist in his face and shouting:

"By God, you are a traitor!"

"You lie!" responded the Bishop.

He a traitor! Oh, far from it; he certainly was
the last Frenchman that any Briton had a right to
bring that charge against.

The Earl of Warwick lost his temper too. He
was a doughty soldier, but when it came to the
intellectuals—when it came to delicate chicane, and
scheming, and trickery—he couldn't see any further
through a millstone than another. So he burst out
in his frank warrior fashion, and swore that the King
of England was being treacherously used, and that
Joan of Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the
stake. But they whispered comfort into his ear:

"Give yourself no uneasiness, my lord; we shall
soon have her again."

Perhaps the like tidings found their way all
around, for good news travels fast as well as bad.
At any rate the ragings presently quieted down, and
the huge concourse crumbled apart and disappeared.
And thus we reached the noon of that fearful
Thursday.

We two youths were happy; happier than any
words can tell—for we were not in the secret any
more than the rest. Joan's life was saved. We
knew that, and that was enough. France would

---

hear of this day's infamous work—and then!
Why, then her gallant sons would flock to her
standard by thousands and thousands, multitudes
upon multitudes, and their wrath would be like the
wrath of the ocean when the storm-winds sweep it;
and they would hurl themselves against this doomed
city and overwhelm it like the resistless tides of that
ocean, and Joan of Arc would march again! In
six days—seven days—one short week—noble
France, grateful France, indignant France, would be
thundering at these gates—let us count the hours,
let us count the minutes, let us count the seconds!
O happy day, O day of ecstasy, how our hearts
sang in our bosoms!

For we were young, then; yes, we were very
young.

Do you think the exhausted prisoner was allowed
to rest and sleep after she had spent the small rem-
nant of her strength in dragging her tired body back
to the dungeon?

No; there was no rest for her, with those sleuth-
hounds on her track. Cauchon and some of his
people followed her to her lair straightway; they
found her dazed and dull, her mental and physical
forces in a state of prostration. They told her she
had abjured; that she had made certain promises—
among them, to resume the apparel of her sex; and
that if she relapsed, the Church would cast her out
for good and all. She heard the words, but they
had no meaning to her. She was like a person who

---

has taken a narcotic and is dying for sleep, dying
for rest from nagging, dying to be let alone, and
who mechanically does everything the persecutor
asks, taking but dull note of the things done, and
but dully recording them in the memory. And so
Joan put on the gown which Cauchon and his people
had brought; and would come to herself by and by,
and have at first but a dim idea as to when and how
the change had come about.

Cauchon went away happy and content. Joan
had resumed woman's dress without protest; also
she had been formally warned against relapsing. He
had witnesses to these facts. How could matters
be better?

But suppose she should not relapse?

Why, then she must be forced to do it.

Did Cauchon hint to the English guards that
thenceforth if they chose to make their prisoner's
captivity crueler and bitterer than ever, no official
notice would be taken of it? Perhaps so; since the
guards did begin that policy at once, and no official
notice was taken of it. Yes, from that moment
Joan's life in that dungeon was made almost unen-
durable. Do not ask me to enlarge upon it. I will
not do it.

---

CHAPTER XXII.

Friday and Saturday were happy days for Noël
and me. Our minds were full of our splendid
dream of France aroused—France shaking her
mane—France on the march—France at the gates
—Rouen in ashes, and Joan free! Our imagination
was on fire; we were delirious with pride and joy.
For we were very young, as I have said.

We knew nothing about what had been happening
in the dungeon the yester-afternoon. We supposed
that as Joan had abjured and been taken back into
the forgiving bosom of the Church, she was being
gently used now, and her captivity made as pleasant
and comfortable for her as the circumstances would
allow. So, in high contentment, we planned out our
share in the great rescue, and fought our part of the
fight over and over again during those two happy
days—as happy days as ever I have known.

Sunday morning came. I was awake, enjoying
the balmy, lazy weather, and thinking. Thinking
of the rescue—what else? I had no other thought
now. I was absorbed in that, drunk with the happi-
ness of it.

---

I heard a voice shouting far down the street, and
soon it came nearer, and I caught the words:

"Joan of Arc has relapsed! The witch's time
has come!"

It stopped my heart, it turned my blood to ice.
That was more than sixty years ago, but that
triumphant note rings as clear in my memory to-day
as it rang in my ear that long-vanished summer
morning. We are so strangely made; the memories
that could make us happy pass away; it is the
memories that break our hearts that abide.

Soon other voices took up that cry—tens, scores,
hundreds of voices; all the world seemed filled with
the brutal joy of it. And there were other clamors
—the clatter of rushing feet, merry congratulations,
bursts of coarse laughter, the rolling of drums, the
boom and crash of distant bands profaning the
sacred day with the music of victory and thanks-
giving.

About the middle of the afternoon came a sum-
mons for Manchon and me to go to Joan's dungeon
—a summons from Cauchon. But by that time
distrust had already taken possession of the English
and their soldiery again, and all Rouen was in an
angry and threatening mood. We could see plenty
of evidences of this from our own windows—fist-
shaking, black looks, tumultuous tides of furious men
billowing by along the street.

And we learned that up at the castle things were
going very badly, indeed; that there was a great

---

mob gathered there who considered the relapse a lie
and a priestly trick, and among them many half-
drunk English soldiers. Moreover, these people had
gone beyond words. They had laid hands upon a
number of churchmen who were trying to enter the
castle, and it had been difficult work to rescue them
and save their lives.

And so Manchon refused to go. He said he
would not go a step without a safeguard from War-
wick. So next morning Warwick sent an escort of
soldiers, and then we went. Matters had not grown
peacefuler meantime, but worse. The soldiers pro-
tected us from bodily damage, but as we passed
through the great mob at the castle we were assailed
with insults and shameful epithets. I bore it well
enough, though, and said to myself, with secret
satisfaction, "In three or four short days, my lads,
you will be employing your tongues in a different
sort from this—and I shall be there to hear."

To my mind these were as good as dead men.
How many of them would still be alive after the
rescue that was coming? Not more than enough to
amuse the executioner a short half-hour, certainly.

It turned out that the report was true. Joan had
relapsed. She was sitting there in her chains,
clothed again in her male attire.

She accused nobody. That was her way. It was
not in her character to hold a servant to account for
what his master had made him do, and her mind
had cleared now, and she knew that the advantage

---

which had been taken of her the previous morning
had its origin, not in the subordinate, but in the
master—Cauchon.

Here is what had happened. While Joan slept, in
the early morning of Sunday, one of the guards
stole her female apparel and put her male attire in
its place. When she woke she asked for the other
dress, but the guards refused to give it back. She
protested, and said she was forbidden to wear the
male dress. But they continued to refuse. She
had to have clothing, for modesty's sake; moreover,
she saw that she could not save her life if she must
fight for it against treacheries like this; so she put on
the forbidden garments, knowing what the end would
be. She was weary of the struggle, poor thing.

We had followed in the wake of Cauchon, the
Vice-Inquisitor, and the others—six or eight—and
when I saw Joan sitting there, despondent, forlorn,
and still in chains, when I was expecting to find her
situation so different, I did not know what to make
of it. The shock was very great. I had doubted
the relapse perhaps; possibly I had believed in it,
but had not realized it.

Cauchon's victory was complete. He had had a
harassed and irritated and disgusted look for a long
time, but that was all gone now, and contentment
and serenity had taken its place. His purple face
was full of tranquil and malicious happiness. He
went trailing his robes and stood grandly in front of
Joan, with his legs apart, and remained so more than

---

a minute, gloating over her and enjoying the sight
of this poor ruined creature, who had won so lofty a
place for him in the service of the meek and merci-
ful Jesus, Saviour of the World, Lord of the Uni-
verse—in case England kept her promise to him,
who kept no promises himself.

Presently the judges began to question Joan. One
of them, named Marguerie, who was a man with
more insight than prudence, remarked upon Joan's
change of clothing, and said:

"There is something suspicious about this. How
could it have come about without connivance on the
part of others? Perhaps even something worse?"

"Thousand devils!" screamed Cauchon, in a
fury. "Will you shut your mouth?"

"Armagnac! Traitor!" shouted the soldiers on
guard, and made a rush for Marguerie with their
lances leveled. It was with the greatest difficulty
that he was saved from being run through the body.
He made no more attempts to help the inquiry,
poor man. The other judges proceeded with the
questionings.

"Why have you resumed this male habit?"

I did not quite catch her answer, for just then a
soldier's halberd slipped from his fingers and fell on
the stone floor with a crash; but I thought I under-
stood Joan to say that she had resumed it of her
own motion.

"But you have promised and sworn that you
would not go back to it."

---

I was full of anxiety to hear her answer to that
question; and when it came it was just what I was
expecting. She said—quite quietly:

"I have never intended and never understood
myself to swear I would not resume it."

There—I had been sure, all along, that she did
not know what she was doing and saying on the
platform Thursday, and this answer of hers was
proof that I had not been mistaken. Then she went
on to add this:

"But I had a right to resume it, because the
promises made to me have not been kept—promises
that I should be allowed to go to mass and receive
the communion, and that I should be freed from the
bondage of these chains—but they are still upon
me, as you see."

"Nevertheless, you have abjured, and have es-
pecially promised to return no more to the dress of
a man."

Then Joan held out her fettered hands sorrowfully
toward these unfeeling men and said:

"I would rather die than continue so. But if
they may be taken off, and if I may hear mass, and
be removed to a penitential prison, and have a
woman about me, I will be good, and will do what
shall seem good to you that I do."

Cauchon sniffed scoffingly at that. Honor the
compact which he and his had made with her?
Fulfill its conditions? What need of that? Condi-
tions had been a good thing to concede, tempo-

---

rarily, and for advantage; but they had served their
turn—let something of a fresher sort and of more
consequence be considered. The resumption of the
male dress was sufficient for all practical purposes,
but perhaps Joan could be led to add something to
that fatal crime. So Cauchon asked her if her
Voices had spoken to her since Thursday—and he
reminded her of her abjuration.

"Yes," she answered; and then it came out that
the Voices had talked with her about the abjuration
—told her about it, I suppose. She guilelessly re-
asserted the heavenly origin of her mission, and did
it with the untroubled mien of one who was not
conscious that she had ever knowingly repudiated it.
So I was convinced once more that she had had no
notion of what she was doing that Thursday morn-
ing on the platform. Finally she said, "My Voices
told me I did very wrong to confess that what I had
done was not well." Then she sighed, and said
with simplicity, "But it was the fear of the fire that
made me do so."

That is, fear of the fire had made her sign a paper
whose contents she had not understood then, but
understood now by revelation of her Voices and by
testimony of her persecutors.

She was sane now and not exhausted; her cour-
age had come back, and with it her inborn loyalty
to the truth. She was bravely and serenely speak-
ing it again, knowing that it would deliver her body
up to that very fire which had such terrors for her.

---

That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank,
wholly free from concealments or palliations. It
made me shudder; I knew she was pronouncing
sentence of death upon herself. So did poor Man-
chon. And he wrote in the margin abreast of it:

Responsio mortifera.

Fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was,
indeed, a fatal answer. Then there fell a silence
such as falls in a sick-room when the watchers by
the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to
another, "All is over."

Here, likewise, all was over; but after some mo-
ments Cauchon, wishing to clinch this matter and
make it final, put this question:

"Do you still believe that your Voices are St.
Marguerite and St. Catherine?"

"Yes—and that they come from God."

"Yet you denied them on the scaffold?"

Then she made direct and clear affirmation that
she had never had any intention to deny them; and
that if—I noted the if—"if she had made some re-
tractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from
fear of the fire, and was a violation of the truth."

There it is again, you see. She certainly never
knew what it was she had done on the scaffold until
she was told of it afterward by these people and by
her Voices.

And now she closed this most painful scene with
these words; and there was a weary note in them
that was pathetic:

---

"I would rather do my penance all at once; let
me die. I cannot endure captivity any longer."

The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed
for release that it would take it in any form, even
that.

Several among the company of judges went from
the place troubled and sorrowful, the others in an-
other mood. In the court of the castle we found
the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting, im-
patient for news. As soon as Cauchon saw them
he shouted—laughing—think of a man destroying
a friendless poor girl and then having the heart to
laugh at it:

"Make yourselves comfortable—it's all over with
her!"

---

CHAPTER XXIII.

The young can sink into abysses of despondency,
and it was so with Noël and me now; but the
hopes of the young are quick to rise again, and it
was so with ours. We called back that vague
promise of the Voices, and said the one to the
other that the glorious release was to happen at
"the last moment"—"that other time was not the
last moment, but this is; it will happen now; the
King will come, La Hire will come, and with them
our veterans, and behind them all France!" And
so we were full of heart again, and could already
hear, in fancy, that stirring music the clash of steel
and the war-cries and the uproar of the onset, and
in fancy see our prisoner free, her chains gone, her
sword in her hand.

But this dream was to pass also, and come to
nothing. Late at night, when Manchon came in,
he said:

"I am come from the dungeon, and I have a
message for you from that poor child."

A message to me! If he had been noticing I
think he would have discovered me—discovered

---

that my indifference concerning the prisoner was a
pretense; for I was caught off my guard, and was
so moved and so exalted to be so honored by her
that I must have shown my feeling in my face and
manner.

"A message for me, your reverence?"

"Yes. It is something she wishes done. She
said she had noticed the young man who helps me,
and that he had a good face; and did I think he
would do a kindness for her? I said I knew you
would, and asked her what it was, and she said a
letter—would you write a letter to her mother?
And I said you would. But I said I would do it
myself, and gladly; but she said no, that my labors
were heavy, and she thought the young man would
not mind the doing of this service for one not able
to do it for herself, she not knowing how to write.
Then I would have sent for you, and at that the
sadness vanished out of her face. Why, it was as if
she was going to see a friend, poor friendless thing.
But I was not permitted. I did my best, but the
orders remain as strict as ever, the doors are closed
against all but officials; as before, none but officials
may speak to her. So I went back and told her,
and she sighed, and was sad again. Now this is
what she begs you to write to her mother. It is
partly a strange message, and to me means nothing,
but she said her mother would understand. You
will 'convey her adoring love to her family and her
village friends, and say there will be no rescue, for

---

that this night—and it is the third time in the
twelve-month, and is final—she has seen The Vision
of the Tree.'"

"How strange!"

"Yes, it is strange, but that is what she said;
and said her parents would understand. And for a
little time she was lost in dreams and thinkings, and
her lips moved, and I caught in her muttering these
lines, which she said over two or three times, and
they seemed to bring peace and contentment to her.
I set them down, thinking they might have some
connection with her letter and be useful; but it was
not so; they were a mere memory, floating idly in
a tired mind, and they have no meaning, at least no
relevancy."

I took the piece of paper, and found what I knew
I should find: "And when in exile wand'ring, weShall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,Oh, rise upon our sight!"

There was no hope any more. I knew it now. I
knew that Joan's letter was a message to Noël and
me, as well as to her family, and that its object was
to banish vain hopes from our minds and tell us
from her own mouth of the blow that was going to
fall upon us, so that we, being her soldiers, would
know it for a command to bear it as became us and
her, and so submit to the will of God; and in thus
obeying, find assuagement of our grief. It was like
her, for she was always thinking of others, not of

---

herself. Yes, her heart was sore for us; she could
find time to think of us, the humblest of her ser-
vants, and try to soften our pain, lighten the burden
of our troubles,—she that was drinking of the bitter
waters; she that was walking in the Valley of the
Shadow of Death.

I wrote the letter. You will know what it cost
me, without my telling you. I wrote it with the
same wooden stylus which had put upon parchment
the first words ever dictated by Joan of Arc—that
high summons to the English to vacate France, two
years past, when she was a lass of seventeen; it had
now set down the last ones which she was ever to
dictate. Then I broke it. For the pen that had
served Joan of Arc could not serve any that would
come after her in this earth without abasement.

The next day, May 29th, Cauchon summoned his
serfs, and forty-two responded. It is charitable to
believe that the other twenty were ashamed to come.
The forty-two pronounced her a relapsed heretic,
and condemned her to be delivered over to the
secular arm. Cauchon thanked them. Then he
sent orders that Joan be conveyed the next morning
to the place known as the Old Market; and that she
be then delivered to the civil judge, and by the civil
judge to the executioner. That meant that she
would be burnt.

All the afternoon and evening of Tuesday, the
29th, the news was flying, and the people of the
country-side flocking to Rouen to see the tragedy—

---

all, at least, who could prove their English sympa-
thies and count upon admission. The press grew
thicker and thicker in the streets, the excitement
grew higher and higher. And now a thing was
noticeable again which had been noticeable more
than once before—that there was pity for Joan in
the hearts of many of these people. Whenever she
had been in great danger it had manifested itself,
and now it was apparent again—manifest in a
pathetic dumb sorrow which was visible in many
faces.

Early the next morning, Wednesday, Martin Lad-
venu and another friar were sent to Joan to prepare
her for death; and Manchon and I went with them
—a hard service for me. We tramped through the
dim corridors, winding this way and that, and pierc-
ing ever deeper and deeper into that vast heart of
stone, and at last we stood before Joan. But she
did not know it. She sat with her hands in her lap
and her head bowed, thinking, and her face was
very sad. One might not know what she was think-
ing of. Of her home, and the peaceful pastures, and
the friends she was no more to see? Of her wrongs,
and her forsaken estate, and the cruelties which had
been put upon her? Or was it of death—the death
which she had longed for, and which was now so
close? Or was it of the kind of death she must
suffer? I hoped not; for she feared only one kind,
and that one had for her unspeakable terrors. I
believed she so feared that one that with her strong

---

will she would shut the thought of it wholly out of
her mind, and hope and believe that God would take
pity on her and grant her an easier one; and so it
might chance that the awful news which we were
bringing might come as a surprise to her at last.

We stood silent awhile, but she was still uncon-
scious of us, still deep in her sad musings and far
away. Then Martin Ladvenu said, softly:

"Joan."

She looked up then, with a little start, and a wan
smile, and said:

"Speak. Have you a message for me?"

"Yes, my poor child. Try to bear it. Do you
think you can bear it?"

"Yes"—very softly, and her head drooped
again.

"I am come to prepare you for death."

A faint shiver trembled through her wasted body.
There was a pause. In the stillness we could hear
our breathings. Then she said, still in that low
voice:

"When will it be?"

The muffled notes of a tolling bell floated to our
ears out of the distance.

"Now. The time is at hand."

That slight shiver passed again.

"It is so soon—ah, it is so soon!"

There was a long silence. The distant throbbings
of the bell pulsed through it, and we stood motion-
less and listening. But it was broken at last.

---

"What death is it?"

"By fire!"

"Oh, I knew it, I knew it!" She sprang wildly
to her feet, and wound her hands in her hair, and
began to writhe and sob, oh, so piteously, and
mourn and grieve and lament, and turn to first one
and then another of us, and search our faces be-
seechingly, as hoping she might find help and friend-
liness there, poor thing—she that had never denied
these to any creature, even her wounded enemy on
the battle-field.

"Oh, cruel, cruel, to treat me so! And must my
body, that has never been defiled, be consumed to-
day and turned to ashes? Ah, sooner would I that
my head were cut off seven times than suffer this
woful death. I had the promise of the Church's
prison when I submitted, and if I had but been
there, and not left here in the hands of my enemies,
this miserable fate had not befallen me. Oh, I
appeal to God the Great Judge, against the injustice
which has been done me."

There was none there that could endure it. They
turned away, with the tears running down their
faces. In a moment I was on my knees at her feet.
At once she thought only of my danger, and bent
and whispered in my ear: "Up!—do not peril
yourself, good heart. There—God bless you al-
ways!" and I felt the quick clasp of her hand.
Mine was the last hand she touched with hers in life.
None saw it; history does not know of it or tell of

---

it, yet it is true, just as I have told it. The next
moment she saw Cauchon coming, and she went and
stood before him and reproached him, saying:

"Bishop, it is by you that I die!"

He was not shamed, not touched; but said,
smoothly:

"Ah, be patient, Joan. You die because you
have not kept your promise, but have returned to
your sins."

"Alas," she said, "if you had put me in the
Church's prison, and given me right and proper
keepers, as you promised, this would not have hap-
pened. And for this I summon you to answer be-
fore God!"

Then Cauchon winced, and looked less placidly
content than before, and he turned him about and
went away.

Joan stood awhile musing. She grew calmer, but
occasionally she wiped her eyes, and now and then
sobs shook her body; but their violence was modi-
fying now, and the intervals between them were
growing longer. Finally she looked up and saw
Pierre Maurice, who had come in with the Bishop,
and she said to him:

"Master Peter, where shall I be this night?"

"Have you not good hope in God?"

"Yes—and by His grace I shall be in Paradise."

Now Martin Ladvenu heard her in confession;
then she begged for the sacrament. But how grant
the communion to one who had been publicly cut

---

off from the Church, and was now no more entitled
to its privileges than an unbaptized pagan? The
brother could not do this, but he sent to Cauchon
to inquire what he must do. All laws, human
and divine, were alike to that man—he respected
none of them. He sent back orders to grant Joan
whatever she wished. Her last speech to him had
reached his fears, perhaps; it could not reach his
heart, for he had none.

The Eucharist was brought now to that poor soul
that had yearned for it with such unutterable long-
ing all these desolate months. It was a solemn
moment. While we had been in the deeps of the
prison, the public courts of the castle had been fill-
ing up with crowds of the humbler sort of men and
women, who had learned what was going on in
Joan's cell, and had come with softened hearts to
do—they knew not what; to hear—they knew not
what. We knew nothing of this, for they were out
of our view. And there were other great crowds of
the like caste gathered in masses outside the
castle gates. And when the lights and the other
accompaniments of the Sacrament passed by, coming
to Joan in the prison, all those multitudes kneeled
down and began to pray for her, and many wept;
and when the solemn ceremony of the communion
began in Joan's cell, out of the distance a moving
sound was borne moaning to our ears—it was those
invisible multitudes chanting the litany for a depart-
ing soul.

---

The fear of the fiery death was gone from Joan of
Arc now, to come again no more, except for one
fleeting instant—then it would pass, and serenity
and courage would take its place and abide till the
end.

---

CHAPTER XXIV.

At nine o'clock the Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of
France, went forth in the grace of her inno-
cence and her youth to lay down her life for the
country she loved with such devotion, and for the
King that had abandoned her. She sat in the cart
that is used only for felons. In one respect she was
treated worse than a felon; for whereas she was on
her way to be sentenced by the civil arm, she already
bore her judgment inscribed in advance upon a
miter-shaped cap which she wore: HERETIC, RELAPSED, APOSTATE, IDOLATER.

In the cart with her sat the friar Martin Ladvenu
and Maître Jean Massieu. She looked girlishly fair
and sweet and saintly in her long white robe, and
when a gush of sunlight flooded her as she emerged
from the gloom of the prison and was yet for a
moment still framed in the arch of the somber gate,
the massed multitudes of poor folk murmured "A
vision! a vision!" and sank to their knees praying,
and many of the women weeping; and the moving
invocation for the dying rose again, and was taken
up and borne along, a majestic wave of sound, which

---

accompanied the doomed, solacing and blessing her,
all the sorrowful way to the place of death. "Christ
have pity! Saint Margaret have pity! Pray for
her, all ye saints, archangels, and blessed martyrs,
pray for her! Saints and angels intercede for her!
From thy wrath, good Lord, deliver her! O Lord
God, save her! Have mercy on her, we beseech
Thee, good Lord!"

It is just and true what one of the histories has
said: "The poor and the helpless had nothing but
their prayers to give Joan of Arc; but these we may
believe were not unavailing. There are few more
pathetic events recorded in history than this weep-
ing, helpless, praying crowd, holding their lighted
candles and kneeling on the pavement beneath the
prison walls of the old fortress."

And it was so all the way: thousands upon thou-
sands massed upon their knees and stretching far
down the distances, thick-sown with the faint yellow
candle-flames, like a field starred with golden flowers.

But there were some that did not kneel; these
were the English soldiers. They stood elbow to
elbow, on each side of Joan's road, and walled it in
all the way; and behind these living walls knelt the
multitudes.

By and by a frantic man in priest's garb came
wailing and lamenting, and tore through the crowd
and the barrier of soldiers and flung himself on his
knees by Joan's cart and put up his hands in suppli-
cation, crying out:

---

"O forgive, forgive!"

It was Loyseleur!

And Joan forgave him; forgave him out of a
heart that knew nothing but forgiveness, nothing
but compassion, nothing but pity for all that suffer,
let their offense be what it might. And she had no
word of reproach for this poor wretch who had
wrought day and night with deceits and treacheries
and hypocrisies to betray her to her death.

The soldiers would have killed him, but the Earl
of Warwick saved his life. What became of him is
not known. He hid himself from the world some-
where, to endure his remorse as he might.

In the square of the Old Market stood the two
platforms and the stake that had stood before in the
churchyard of St. Ouen. The platforms were occu-
pied as before, the one by Joan and her judges, the
other by great dignitaries, the principal being Cau-
chon and the English Cardinal—Winchester. The
square was packed with people, the windows and
roofs of the blocks of buildings surrounding it were
black with them.

When the preparations had been finished, all noise
and movement gradually ceased, and a waiting still-
ness followed which was solemn and impressive.

And now, by order of Cauchon, an ecclesiastic
named Nicholas Midi preached a sermon, wherein
he explained that when a branch of the vine—
which is the Church—becomes diseased and cor-
rupt, it must be cut away or it will corrupt and de-

---

stroy the whole vine. He made it appear that Joan,
through her wickedness, was a menace and a peril
to the Church's purity and holiness, and her death
therefore necessary. When he was come to the end
of his discourse he turned toward her and paused a
moment, then he said:

"Joan, the Church can no longer protect you.
Go in peace!'

Joan had been placed wholly apart and conspicu-
ous, to signify the Church's abandonment of her,
and she sat there in her loneliness, waiting in
patience and resignation for the end. Cauchon
addressed her now. He had been advised to read
the form of her abjuration to her, and had brought
it with him; but he changed his mind, fearing that
she would proclaim the truth—that she had never
knowingly abjured—and so bring shame upon him
and eternal infamy. He contented himself with ad-
monishing her to keep in mind her wickednesses,
and repent of them, and think of her salvation.
Then he solemnly pronounced her excommunicate
and cut off from the body of the Church. With a
final word he delivered her over to the secular arm
for judgment and sentence.

Joan, weeping, knelt and began to pray. For
whom? Herself? Oh, no—for the King of France.
Her voice rose sweet and clear, and penetrated all
hearts with its passionate pathos. She never thought
of his treacheries to her, she never thought of his
desertion of her, she never remembered that it was

---

because he was an ingrate that she was here to die a
miserable death; she remembered only that he was
her King, that she was his loyal and loving subject,
and that his enemies had undermined his cause with
evil reports and false charges, and he not by to
defend himself. And so, in the very presence of
death, she forgot her own troubles to implore all in
her hearing to be just to him; to believe that he was
good and noble and sincere, and not in any way to
blame for any acts of hers, neither advising them
nor urging them, but being wholly clear and free
of all responsibility for them. Then, closing, she
begged in humble and touching words that all here
present would pray for her and would pardon her,
both her enemies and such as might look friendly
upon her and feel pity for her in their hearts.

There was hardly one heart there that was not
touched—even the English, even the judges showed
it, and there was many a lip that trembled and many
an eye that was blurred with tears; yes, even the
English Cardinal's—that man with a political heart
of stone but a human heart of flesh.

The secular judge who should have delivered
judgment and pronounced sentence was himself so
disturbed that he forgot his duty, and Joan went to
her death unsentenced—thus completing with an
illegality what had begun illegally and had so con-
tinued to the end. He only said—to the guards:

"Take her;" and to the executioner, "Do your
duty."

---

Joan asked for a cross. None was able to furnish
one. But an English soldier broke a stick in two
and crossed the pieces and tied them together, and
this cross he gave her, moved to it by the good
heart that was in him; and she kissed it and put it
in her bosom. Then Isambard de la Pierre went to
the church near by and brought her a consecrated
one; and this one also she kissed, and pressed it to
her bosom with rapture, and then kissed it again
and again, covering it with tears and pouring out
her gratitude to God and the saints.

And so, weeping, and with her cross to her lips,
she climbed up the cruel steps to the face of the
stake, with the friar Isambard at her side. Then
she was helped up to the top of the pile of wood
that was built around the lower third of the stake,
and stood upon it with her back against the stake, and
the world gazing up at her breathless. The exe-
cutioner ascended to her side and wound chains
about her slender body, and so fastened her to the
stake. Then he descended to finish his dreadful
office; and there she remained alone—she that had
had so many friends in the days when she was free,
and had been so loved and so dear.

All these things I saw, albeit dimly and blurred
with tears; but I could bear no more. I continued
in my place, but what I shall deliver to you now I
got by others' eyes and others' mouths. Tragic
sounds there were that pierced my ears and wounded
my heart as I sat there, but it is as I tell you: the

---

latest image recorded by my eyes in that desolating
hour was Joan of Arc with the grace of her comely
youth still unmarred; and that image, untouched by
time or decay, has remained with me all my days.
Now I will go on.

If any thought that now, in that solemn hour
when all transgressors repent and confess, she would
revoke her revocation and say her great deeds had
been evil deeds and Satan and his fiends their
source, they erred. No such thought was in her
blameless mind. She was not thinking of herself
and her troubles, but of others, and of woes that
might befall them. And so, turning her grieving
eyes about her, where rose the towers and spires of
that fair city, she said:

"Oh, Rouen, Rouen, must I die here, and must
you be my tomb? Ah, Rouen, Rouen, I have great
fear that you will suffer for my death."

A whiff of smoke swept upward past her face,
and for one moment terror seized her and she cried
out, "Water! Give me holy water!" but the next
moment her fears were gone, and they came no
more to torture her.

She heard the flames crackling below her, and im-
mediately distress for a fellow-creature who was in
danger took possession of her. It was the friar
Isambard. She had given him her cross and begged
him to raise it toward her face and let her eyes rest
in hope and consolation upon it till she was entered
into the peace of God. She made him go out from

---

the danger of the fire. Then she was satisfied, and
said:

"Now keep it always in my sight until the end."

Not even yet could Cauchon, that man without
shame, endure to let her die in peace, but went
toward her, all black with crimes and sins as he was,
and cried out:

"I am come, Joan, to exhort you for the last
time to repent and seek the pardon of God."

"I die through you," she said, and these were
the last words she spoke to any upon earth.

Then the pitchy smoke, shot through with red
flashes of flame, rolled up in a thick volume and hid
her from sight; and from the heart of this darkness
her voice rose strong and eloquent in prayer, and
when by moments the wind shredded somewhat of
the smoke aside, there were veiled glimpses of an
upturned face and moving lips. At last a mercifully
swift tide of flame burst upward, and none saw that
face any more nor that form, and the voice was still.

Yes, she was gone from us: Joan of Arc! What
little words they are, to tell of a rich world made
empty and poor!